A vast, increasingly digital consumer market.
India internet & digital technology
We invest in India’s internet and digital future.
Hornbill Capital backs the companies building India’s digital economy across public and private markets.
Founded2014
Investment lensPublic + private
Based inIndia
The India opportunity
India’s internet and digital tech sector is where the most durable alpha is being built.
A billion people connected. Internet data among the cheapest in the world. A national digital infrastructure — Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker — that gives businesses the rails to reach every Indian.
India’s complexity was never a lack of demand. It was always a question of how that demand gets distributed, accessed, and served. Technology is answering that question and the companies doing so are where we invest.
We look for advantages that strengthen with scale and endure through cycles.
What we look for
Business models that become harder to beat as they grow.
Four characteristics shape the same disciplined lens across every investment.
Concentration creates clarity.
One sector, studied across its full lifecycle. Public and private market knowledge continually sharpen the same view.
Forest completely known01
Complementary strategies02
Public portfolio concentration10–15
Founded in Mumbai2014
We don’t migrate. We stay rooted.
One forest, completely known.
We have stayed in the same forest — internet and digital technology in India. Over a decade of investing across public and private markets has compounded into something genuinely difficult to replicate from scratch: a view that is wide and deep in private markets, rigorous in public ones, and sharpened by the interaction between the two.
MUM · 201419.0760° N, 72.8777° E
A view across markets
Businesses that fit our preferred models.
NSEExchange monopolyPublic
NazaraGaming network effectsPublic
PhysicsWallahEdtech category brandPrivate
DhanCapital markets fintechPrivate
KreditBeeEmbedded credit distributionPrivate
How we invest
The same lens governs both.
We invest in companies that become harder to beat the larger they get, from growth-stage private companies to listed market leaders.
Strategy / 01
Public Equity
A concentrated, long-only fund investing in listed companies in India’s internet and digital technology ecosystem.
Explore public equity Strategy / 02Private Equity
We invest in growth and late-stage rounds in category-defining Indian companies in the private sector.
Explore private equityOur investment lens
Five questions. One disciplined view.
When we evaluate a company—listed or private—we return to the same fundamentals.
Our conviction
We have stayed true to our strategy since 2015.
India’s internet and digital technology sector has structural tailwinds that will run for decades.
When we evaluate a company, whether listed or private, we ask the same questions: Does it have a structural advantage that compounds? Does it use data to get better over time? Does it have network effects or a brand that creates a genuine moat? Is management building for the long term?
Our work in private markets gives us an edge that most public market investors don’t have — an early view of how the competitive landscape is evolving, well before it becomes visible in reported numbers.
Our story
Named after a bird that never migrates.
The Hornbill bird doesn’t migrate. It finds its forest, stays, and spends a lifetime learning it. We chose the name in 2014 for exactly that reason. One forest. Completely known.
Manoj Thakur founded Hornbill Capital with a clear view: India’s internet and digital economy was becoming one of the most significant investment opportunities in the world, and the way to invest in it well was not to be broad, but to go deep.
The team
Continuity is itself a form of conviction.
Manoj Thakur · Jagdish Patel · Monica Joshi · Sahil Desai
Meet the whole team
Hornbill journal
Perspectives from one well-known forest.
The SaaS Revolution: India’s Product Playbook
How Indian founders are rewriting the global SaaS playbook from Chennai to San Francisco.
Fintech 2.0: Beyond Digital Payments
The next wave of innovation in credit and insurance as UPI matures.
Bridging Private and Public Markets
Our philosophy on navigating the crossover stage in high-growth companies.
Start a conversation
Let’s talk.
We welcome conversations with institutional investors, family offices, and founders building in the internet and technology space.
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