Mercurius Media Capital

Mercurius Media Capital does not deploy cash. It negotiates placements of television, digital, streaming, and out-of-home advertising inventory on behalf of portfolio companies, receiving equity in return. The firm pools media supply from partner outlets and allocates it to founders who need scaled distribution. The equity terms, campaign size, and duration are deal-specific, but the base mechanism is an asset swap designed to extend a company's cash runway.

Co-founders Satyan Gajwani and Piyush Puri drive the investment process. Gajwani chairs Times Internet and previously structured media-for-equity investments for Uber, Airbnb, and Coursera in India. Puri, a CFA charterholder, leads The Times of India Group's North American operations and has executed more than 40 media-for-equity deals. The firm does not publicly identify a separate investment committee.

MMC targets growth-stage companies, typically post-Series A or with equivalent traction from bootstrapping. Its published criteria require a functional product with demonstrated user engagement, strategic need for marketing and branding, and disruptive potential, usually through technology or behavioral design. The firm does not invest pre-product or pre-revenue.

It functions as neither a conventional venture fund nor a single-family office. The firm acts as a media-for-equity vehicle that accepts media inventory from partner outlets and allocates it to growth companies for equity. This structure places it closer to a hybrid corporate-development and media-buying operation than to a pooled investment fund that raises and deploys cash.

Both co-founders hold senior roles inside The Times of India Group: Satyan Gajwani is Chairman of Times Internet and a board member of the parent group, while Piyush Puri is President of its North America operations. MMC was established as a separate US-headquartered entity, but its media-for-equity model is a direct extension of the approach the founders practiced for over two decades within the Indian conglomerate.