Vishal Gondal, Founder and CEO of Indiagames Ltd, is becoming a saviour for startups. Gondal, who sold a large chunk of his holdings in the online gaming company Indiagames first to Chinese gaming giant Tom Online and later to UTV Software Communications, has launched a new venture called Sweat And Blood Venture Group. This entity will invest in startups at seed level, mentor them, and help them scale.

Gondal has already made his first (undisclosed) investment in Instablogs, a social news website headquartered out of an unusual place - Shimla in Himachal Pradesh (see another story here for more details). Instablogs has a worldwide network of citizen journalists writing about news developments and is modelled on the basis of Canadian social news website NowPublic.com. Gondal says there are promising startups outside large cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, and his idea is to spot them, invest in them and mentor them.

Currently, Gondal is investing his personal money. He refused to say how much has been kept aside, however, VCCircle’s independent estimate is that he could have made about $4-5 million from his partial exit from Indiagames. Don’t expect Gondal to invest all of them in startups. He says there are more successful entrepreneurs joining hands with him to help early stage companies. Gondal says they can invest in a startup anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 (Rs 40 lakh to Rs 2 crore) For more on this, go here.

This story was provided by our content partner VCCircle