Attracting Global LPs: Emerging VC Strategies

Every emerging manager asks the same question. How do you get a global LP to write the first cheque? Graham Pingree of Cendana Capital, a seed stage fund of funds, sat down with two India based GPs who have actually closed that gap, Rajul Garg of Leo Capital and Arjun Rao of Speciale Invest, for a tactical session on what allocators look for and how long the process really takes.

Cendana's selection lens. Concentrated, high conviction portfolios. Roughly ten percent of fund size as an entry ownership rule of thumb, pushed higher outside the US to compensate for added risk. And hard checks on ecosystem maturity: talent, downstream capital and exit access all have to be real rather than aspirational.

Small portfolios and big ownership, on purpose. Both Indian GPs run deliberately concentrated books rather than diversifying risk away. Arjun's proof point was a first fund company where an unusually large cheque bought around twenty percent ownership and returned three and a half to four and a half times the entire fund on its own.

Cold email works if you are relentless. Rajul closed a major sovereign LP purely through cold outreach. It took two years to convert. No warm introduction and no shortcut, just consistency.

Do not let one anchor LP size your fund. Graham's warning to first time managers was that LPs who are dogmatic about a fixed cheque size and a hard percentage cap are usually the wrong long term fit. Building a fund around satisfying that one relationship is a mistake.

Deploy across three to four years, not one to two. Longer deployment smooths vintage year risk and lets early companies show real markups before the next raise begins. Most first time managers under index on this.

Secondaries are becoming a real seed stage tool. The panel closed on a joint venture between Cendana and Kline Hill built specifically to buy seed fund commitments, an emerging option for GPs and early LPs who need liquidity before a fund's natural exit horizon.

• Graham Pingree, Partner, Cendana Capital.
• Rajul Garg, Founder and Managing Partner, Leo Capital.
• Arjun Rao, Founding Partner, Speciale Invest.

This session was part of the IndianVCs Venture Summit, three days of conversations with more than twenty investors and allocators on LP fundraising, portfolio support, and the tools reshaping how funds operate. The full set of recordings lives on our YouTube channel.

The thread connecting all three speakers is that LP readiness is not about a bigger network. It is about a legible, concentrated strategy an allocator can underwrite, and the patience to wait out a sales cycle measured in years rather than months.