Bengaluru, India, July 23: Campus Fund, India’s first and only SEBI-registered venture capital fund dedicated exclusively to student– and dropout-led startups, today announced that Dr. Howard L. Morgan has joined its Global Advisory Board. The appointment marks a major step in Campus Fund’s evolution from India’s pioneering student-focused fund into a globally connected investment platform.
Dr. Morgan is one of the most respected figures in venture capital. He is Chair and General Partner of B Capital, the multi-stage global investment firm, and co-founder of First Round Capital, the seed-stage firm behind early investments in Uber, Square, Roblox, and Notion. Earlier in his career, he served as Founding President of Renaissance Technologies and was a founding investor in Idealab, the world’s longest-running technology incubator. In 2025, he was inducted into the National Venture Capital Association’s Venture Vanguard class.
For Campus Fund, the connection runs deeper than credentials. In 2012, Dr. Morgan and his partners at First Round Capital created the Dorm Room Fund, the first institutional fund in the United States dedicated to backing student founders while they were still on campus. That model proved that world-changing companies are born in dorm rooms, and it has since backed hundreds of student-led startups. Campus Fund was founded in 2020 by Richa Bajpai on the same conviction: that India’s campuses, hostels, and labs are home to founders the traditional venture ecosystem overlooks. Dr. Morgan’s arrival connects one of the pioneers of that thesis with its Indian counterpart.
“Howard didn’t just invest in the idea that students can build great companies; he institutionalized it a full decade before anyone else believed it,” said Richa Bajpai, Founder and CEO of Campus Fund. “Having the pioneer of the student–founder fund model on our Global Advisory Board is both a validation of what we have built in India and a bridge to where we are going. This is the moment Campus Fund becomes a truly global fund.”
“Great founders are everywhere. I have seen it on campuses across America, and I see it now across India,” said Dr. Howard Morgan. “What Richa and the Campus Fund team have built is the most compelling expression of the student–founder thesis anywhere in the world today. India’s young builders are working on deep tech, space, and climate at a scale and ambition that is impossible to ignore, and I am delighted to help this movement go global.”
A Global Chapter for Campus Fund
Dr. Morgan’s appointment comes as Campus Fund deploys its third and largest fund: a $100 million corpus announced in June 2025, through which it plans to back up to 60 startups over four years with initial cheques of INR 1–8 crore. The fund evaluates more than 7,000 startups annually through a network of 100+ student scouts across campuses. Its portfolio spans deep tech, space tech, climate tech, and many more, including the likes of Digantara (space surveillance and mapping), EtherealX (reusable rockets), Sarla Aviation (electric flying taxis), GreenGrahi (insect protein), and Serendipity Space (protein crystallization in space). Several portfolio companies have gone on to raise follow-on capital from global investors including a16z, DST Global, Alpha Wave, Sky9 Capital, Accel, Prosus, and Global Brain.
“The next generation of iconic companies will not come only from Silicon Valley,” added Bajpai. “They will come from hostel rooms in Bhopal, a garage in Surat, a lab in Chennai. Howard’s partnership tells the world that this belief is no longer just ours; it is shared by the person who proved it first.”