Himanshu Malik

My journey into venture capital is rooted in a lifelong fascination with market mechanics and capital allocation. Growing up in Delhi, my early career was defined by over a decade in private wealth management at institutions like 360One, HSBC, and Citibank. While I built a strong foundation in helping individuals manage capital, I realized I wanted to understand the actual operational architecture of the businesses we were analyzing. This drive led me to pursue executive education at IIM Calcutta, shifting my focus toward strategic business management.

But I knew that to truly understand scale, I had to build it myself.

I transitioned from wealth management into venture building, initially launching a consumer goods rental platform that continues to operate successfully today. Recognizing a significant white space in the personalized, health-focused food sector, I launched my second venture, scaling it from the ground up and eventually securing a profitable exit after three years in operation. Those years in the trenches forged my operator-first DNA. They taught me the visceral reality of what it takes to survive the 0-to-1 journey.

Following that exit, I sought to drive impact at a macroeconomic scale. I joined the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India to build and lead a national Startups Mission. Starting with a blank slate, I scaled a 30-person team and, over four years, we actively supported the commercialization of more than 500 startups. We embedded ourselves in their journeys—optimizing GTM strategies, product roadmaps, and fundraising efforts—driving their transition from 0 to 100.

Concurrently, I began deploying my own capital as an angel investor. Relying on my operator instincts, I backed early-stage consumer and technology businesses. Seeing several of these early proprietary bets secure significant markups and Tier-1 follow-on rounds validated the thesis, leading me to launch Startup Sherpas in 2023—a vehicle that rapidly evolved from an accelerator into a high-conviction investment network.

Today, India’s consumer and technology narrative is at an unprecedented inflection point. It is the perfect macroeconomic window to back enduring consumer brands alongside the mission-critical tech that brings structural efficiency to them. Operating at this exact intersection of macro-policy, institutional capital, and ground-level execution, I launched Cognate Capital.

We do not just wait for outcomes; we partner with relentless builders to architect them.