Will Kohler brings together experience as a startup founder, a background as a drafted professional soccer player, and roots as the son of Austrian and Greek immigrants, which shapes his team-first, founder-focused approach as a leader of Lightspeed's growth practice—an approach that led him to back overlooked areas like insurance early on and financial infrastructure companies expanding access, such as Flink in Mexico. He joined venture through a former college soccer teammate rather than a typical finance path, and he describes his role as helping founders step back and see their business clearly, all while staying personally low-key and preferring to let founders and colleagues speak for him.
About their Fund
Lightspeed India focuses on solving India-specific problems rather than copying U.S. or China playbooks, invests mostly at the seed and Series A stage but can offer much larger follow-on funding through its global platform, and writes checks from about $1 million to $100 million across India and Southeast Asia using the same fund. The firm also provides dedicated in-house support in areas like talent, leadership, and M&A, has added experienced operators such as former Boat CEO Vivek Gambhir and Gojek cofounder Kevin Aluwi as venture partners, prefers secondary share sales over IPOs as its main way of returning capital, and sees India's biggest AI opportunity in application-layer tools and upgrading IT and BPO work rather than building foundational AI infrastructure.
















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