Investing in Unshackled

We are proud to announce our latest investment in Unshackled Ventures Fund I, made through the Gratitude Inclusive Capital Fund (ICF). This transaction, a secondary purchase of existing limited partners’ stakes, reflects an approach we expect to lean on more as the impact investing market matures: acquiring seasoned positions in funds run by managers we know and trust. 

Secondaries have surged across venture and private equity as LPs look for liquidity amid a prolonged exit drought, and the impact investing world is only beginning to catch up. As ImpactAlpha recently reported, this deal gave us the chance to step in when Unshackled’s team was proactively exploring liquidity options for a few of its earlier backers. Rather than working through a broker or an anonymous marketplace, we corresponded directly with Unshackled’s Founding Partner Manan Mehta, taking a relationship-driven approach that we believe leads to better outcomes for everyone at the table. 

Why We Invested in Unshackled

Team and Experience 
Unshackled Ventures was founded in 2014 by Manan Mehta and Nitin Pachisia. Since then, the firm has raised several funds, invested in roughly 110 companies, and produced multiple positive exits and distributions along the way. The team’s track record reflects real pricing discipline: by engaging founders at the earliest, “day-zero” stage, Unshackled has consistently secured ownership at valuations well below what later-stage, more consensus-driven investors typically pay. 

A Structural, Differentiated Advantage 
Unshackled’s core insight is that talented immigrant founders are too often held back by structural barriers—visas, legal complexity, and a lack of network. The firm built a platform to solve this directly, sponsoring visas and managing the legal and administrative burden so founders can focus on building. To date, Unshackled has supported over 300 visa applications with a 100% success rate, and its portfolio companies have gone on to employ more than 1,000 people. 

Impact 
Unshackled’s mission is to ensure high-potential immigrant founders have a fair shot at building great companies in the U.S. For years, demand for H-1B visas has outstripped supply by multiples — in the 2023 lottery alone, more than 780,000 foreign workers registered for just 85,000 available slots — a gap that leaves many exceptional founders without a path forward. Beyond the platform’s visa-support work, Fund I’s portfolio is notably diverse, with one-third of companies having at least one female founder and over 80% led by at least one BIPOC founder. 

Company Spotlight: Luminai 

One of Fund I’s standout companies is Luminai, which builds AI that automates the administrative workflows healthcare runs on — referral management, intake, and billing coordination that today require armies of staff bridging disconnected systems. Luminai’s platform is now deployed at Cleveland Clinic, a 23-hospital system, where it identifies, triages, and routes incoming patient referrals arriving by fax with over 80% automation on document types that previously required full manual review.  

After receiving numerous rejections from VC firms, Luminai CEO Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran was connected to Unshackled, which led the company’s pre-seed round and sponsored his visa and later his EB-1 green card. Because Unshackled was willing to take a bet on Luminai and remove structural barriers to entry, the company has gone on to join Y Combinator; raise a Seed, a Series A, and most recently a $38M Series B led by Peak XV; and scale into a company now trusted by major healthcare and insurance organizations.  

We’re excited to partner with Manan and the Unshackled team, to back a mission-driven manager with a genuinely differentiated thesis, and to continue building out our LP secondaries program.