What stage does Z21 Ventures invest at?

Z21 Ventures invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A stages.

What is Z21 Ventures's typical check size?

Z21 Ventures typically writes checks of $500K – $1M.

Where is Z21 Ventures located?

Z21 Ventures is headquartered in San Francisco Bay Area, US.

Does Z21 Ventures lead rounds?

Z21 Ventures typically participates in rounds rather than leading them.

Z21 Ventures

Venture capitalActively deploying

San Francisco Bay Area · Pre-Seed–Series A · 11 people tracked

Also known as Z21 Ventures HEN Nozzles Dec 2024 · Z21 Ventures HEN Nozzles July 2025 · z21 Ventures ID Cafe March 2025

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Investment thesis

Z21 Ventures positions its 205+ member community of operators, investors, and advisors as a core value proposition, offering portfolio companies hands-on support beyond capital. The community engages with every portfolio company across the lifecycle — from sourcing through scaling — helping with areas such as go-to-market strategy and growth acceleration, and leveraging extensive industry connections. Testimonials reference expertise in healthcare and enterprise software, indicating relevant sector strengths. The firm emphasizes opening doors and providing an 'unfair advantage from day one' rather than acting solely as a source of funding.

Invests inAI & Machine Learning Consumer Data & Infrastructure Deep Tech Enterprise Software Healthtech SaaSBerkeleyGlobalIndiaNorth AmericaSan FranciscoSan Francisco Bay AreaUnited States

Source: firm website, verified Aug 3, 2026.

Stage

Pre-Seed–Series A

Check

$500K – $1M

San Francisco Bay Area, California, US

Leads rounds

Follows

Instruments

Equity

Founded

2022

Tracked investments

Team · 11 people

from the firm's website & public directories

Abhinav Shashank· Co-founder & General Partner· Oakland, California, United Statesin

Abhinav Shashank is a founder-operator who leverages experience scaling Innovaccer into a global health‑tech unicorn and projects a distinctive family-first personal brand, listing Avni's Dad before his titles.

a•••@z21.venturesreveal

Jyotika Gupta· Co-founder & Partner· Oakland, California, United Statesin

Jyotika Gupta turns informal IIT and operator networks into venture pipelines, backing mission-driven early-stage founders with fast directional conviction, empathy, and a focus on insight and execution over market size.

j•••@z21.venturesreveal

Raj Shekhar Singh· Co-founder & General Partner· San Francisco, California, United Statesin

Raj Shekhar Singh is a serial entrepreneur-turned-investor focused on the US–India technology corridor who combines operator-led experience with board and operating roles, positioning himself as entrepreneur, investor and builder.

r•••@z21.venturesreveal

Sudarshan Ravi Jha· Co-founder & Partner· Berkeley, California, United Statesin

Sudarshan Ravi Jha, who co-founded and scaled LetsTransport, invests in AI for supply chain and transportation and brings hands-on, operationally grounded support to founders.

s•••@z21.venturesreveal

Shachi Shah· Principal· San Francisco, California, United Statesin

Shachi brings venture capital, corporate finance, and alternative investing experience from Plug and Play, EQUIAM, ICICI, and Axis Group. She founded Tau Toys and holds degrees from IIT Bombay and UC Berkeley.

Anand Akela· Venture Advisor· San Francisco Bay Areain

Anand is CMO at Acalvio Technologies with prior marketing, product, and engineering leadership roles at Nutanix and AppDynamics. He serves on the TiE board and holds an MBA from Duke University.

Ankit Bhangar· Venture Advisor· Noida, Uttar Pradesh, Indiain

Ankit leads Risk Measurement at Barclays and has over 14 years of risk management and analytics experience in financial services. He holds a Masters in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Kharagpur.

Dibyendu Rana· Venture Advisor· Pleasanton, California, United Statesin

Dibyendu is VP of Engineering at International Battery Company and previously worked as a senior technologist at Apple and an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor. He holds a BTech from IIT Kharagpur and a graduate degree in Power Electronics from Texas A&M.

Tony Hu· Legal Counsel

Tony provides legal counsel to Z21 Ventures and its portfolio, focusing on tax law and civil litigation. He holds a JD from UC Berkeley Law and a BA from UC Berkeley.

Udit Batish· Analyst· San Francisco, California, United Statesin

Udit is an IIT Delhi alumnus who previously worked as a Senior Associate Consultant in investment strategy consulting at Nomura (NRI) Consulting, advising on market entry and due diligence across India, Japan, and the Middle East.

Ritik Singh· Analyst

r•••@z21.venturesreveal

What they invest in

from 6 of 48 portfolio companies

AI & Machine Learning ×5SaaS ×3Cloud Computing ×2Data & Infrastructure ×1Deep Tech ×1Defense Tech ×1Developer Tools ×1Enterprise Software ×1

HQs:United States×4

Investments · 48 tracked

founders shown can be your intro path

Hen Technologieshentechnologies.comin 𝕏✓ verified

HEN Technologies builds an integrated fire defense platform combining re-engineered suppression hardware (nozzles, monitors, pump controls), a data layer, and real-time AI incident-command software (FLUID-IQ and STAR-IQ).

AI & Machine LearningDefense TechGovTechHardwareSaaS

Sunny Sethi(Founder)

Adaption Labs

BabbleBots

BasePair

Breakout AI

Cignara

Conifer Systems

CoverSelfcoverself.comin

CoverSelf offers a healthcare payment integrity platform that helps payers detect and prevent claims inaccuracies and payment leakage while reducing administrative costs.

FintechHealthtechSaaSSan Francisco, US

Rajasekhar Maddireddy(Executive Officer, Director, Promoter)Raghavendra Pawar(Executive Officer, Director, Promoter)

Develo

DeviceThread

Dmand

Earkart

Explorex

Flashaid

FOXO

Furnishka

Gaana AI

Gimbal Space

Gloroots

Greenjets

Harness Care

Harness Insurance

Hostedhosted.aiin

hosted·ai is a turnkey platform for GPU orchestration, monetization and neocloud operations, using software-defined GPU multi-tenancy, overcommit and elastic GPUaaS to raise GPU utilization and margin.

AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingData & InfrastructureSan Jose, US

Ditlev Bredahl(Executive Officer, Director)Narendar Shankar(Executive Officer, Director)

BoardCarl Fritjofsson(Director)James Withall(Director)Claus Zibrandtsen(Director)

Humigent

Incerto

Inito

Kidex

Kim CC

Lighthouz AIlighthouz.aiin 𝕏

Lighthouz AI provides AI-powered back-office automation for freight brokers, automating freight bill audits, accounts receivable, and collections.

AI & Machine LearningEnterprise SoftwareLogistics & Supply ChainSaaSAtlanta, US

Srijan Kumar(CEO & Co-founder)inSonali Pattnaik(COO & Co-founder)in

LivSyt

Matterfact

Meomind

Mighty AI

MoneyClub

MyoLabmyolab.ai

Myolab develops MyoSapiens, an embodied AI system designed to understand and learn from human full-body movements, behaviors, and interactions by combining embodied behavior data with environmental context and world knowledge.

AI & Machine LearningDeep TechRobotics

Naïve

Optiwise

Origin

Perceptyne Robots

Rapidflare

Refold AI

Rexera

Risa Labsrisalabs.aiin

Shifu Health

The Energy Company

TrueFoundrytruefoundry.comin 𝕏

TrueFoundry provides a unified platform for deploying, governing, scaling, and tracing agentic AI and LLM workloads, including an AI gateway, model hosting, fine-tuning, and observability.

AI & Machine LearningCloud ComputingDeveloper Tools

vHub

Zime

Portfolio news

latest coverage across their companies

Naïve raises $28.5M to automate setting up and running a company

Naïve · techcrunch.com · Aug 10, 2026

Lighthouz AI: AI to automate AP and AR for freight brokers and 3PLs

Lighthouz AI · ycombinator.com · Dec 22, 2025

Frequently asked questions

What stage does Z21 Ventures invest at?: Z21 Ventures invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed, Series A stages.
What is Z21 Ventures's typical check size?: Z21 Ventures typically writes checks of $500K – $1M.
What sectors does Z21 Ventures focus on?: Z21 Ventures focuses on AI & Machine Learning, Consumer, Data & Infrastructure, Deep Tech, Enterprise Software, Healthtech, SaaS.
Where is Z21 Ventures located?: Z21 Ventures is headquartered in San Francisco Bay Area, US.
Does Z21 Ventures lead rounds?: Z21 Ventures typically participates in rounds rather than leading them.

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