Four Pursuits Ventures is a business and financial investment company based in New Delhi, India.
It largely invests in businesses that have the potential, and people/leaders who have the passion, to bring about social change & impact.
It has its investments largely in India and Israel across a diverse set of sectors such as Agritech, Cleantech, Ayurveda, Bioengineering, Digital platforms across a wide range of offerings, Health, Films & Media, Event Management, Food & Beverages and similar.
WHAT DOES FOUR PURSUITS MEAN?
Four Pursuits comes from four pursuits suggested in hinduism namely:
- Dharma stands for pursuit of is righteousness or duty, or more philosophically, the order of things in the cosmos
- Artha is the pursuit of skills & knowledge, wealth & opulence, security & power
- Kama is the pursuit of all forms of desires – love & sexuality, health & well-being, music & arts
- Moksha represents the eternal purpose of all life, consciously or unconsciously, leading towards a merger with the Divine
The pursuit of Artha and Kama is bracketed by the higher order pursuits of Dharma — furthering the goals of the Indian state & Indian civilisation, furthering of better health for people in India & globally, delivering on clean tech solutions for the world.
This venture is a platform to pursue Artha for the purposes of Dharma.
MISSION (HOW?)
- To invest businesses that have a large social and environmental impact
- To invest in businesses that elevate the status of India amidst the comity of nations
- To incubate people who commit to contribute towards Hindu Dharma via the nature of their business or by donating 7% of their annual profits towards projects & organisations working to reclaim & rebuild the Indian civilisation (which essentially & unapologetically is Vedic/ Yogic/ Hindu)
Inspiration
“What comes from the people must go back to the people many-many times over.” ~ Late JRD Tata
About the Founder
Rahul Dewan is an entrepreneur, open source & agile evangelist, blogger, activist, amateur photographer and a disciplined yoga & meditation practitioner.
Rahul founded and ran a software services business for 20 years, grew it to nearly 600 people and finally exited the business, selling to an American company in 2022. He is now an angel investor and invests in early stage startups across a variety of sectors such as Ayurveda (traditional & ancient Indian medicine), Surgical Medical Devices, SynBio, CleanTech, FoodTech, even Films & Documentaries.
He founded a non-profit charitable organisation in 2006 with a focus on non-formal education. Since then the Charitable Trust, Sarayu Foundation, has touched lives of 1000+ children from underprivileged backgrounds, largely focussed around New Delhi, but also in villages in Eastern India. Sarayu Trust has been running non-formal after schools, teaching kids Maths, Music, English, Yoga and has created social spaces for kids to share, learn and grow in confidence.
In 2016, Rahul expanded the scope of Sarayu Charitable Trust by founding SangamTalks, a YouTube channel which over the years has become a large platform for documentation of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS), Indian History, History of Sciences & Mathematics, Economics, Arts & Culture, Environment, Travel, and so on. It has hosted nearly 1000 scholars & amateur researchers hosting over 1600 long-form lectures on these subjects. SangamTalks runs in 6 Indian languages with English and Hindi getting most prominence, for now.
Rahul is a philanthropist and other than funding all his charitable endeavours largely from his own resources, he also supports financially nearly 50 individuals and organisations, in their respective motivations but all aligning towards the common cause of ‘rebuilding the Indian Civilization’.
Rahul holds a B.Tech in Computer Sciences, a certificate in Ornithology, couple of certifications in Creative Writing.
“Do the right thing, and right things happen to you” is his motto in life, inspired by his Guru, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. His blog is therefore aptly titled ‘Doing the Right Things’ (https://medium.com/doing-the-right-things)