Smile Group is a technology investor + operator that builds and scales leading global businesses across high-growth markets. Founded by Harish Bahl, we’re led by serial founders committed to championing entrepreneurship.
We meet ventures where they are. Whether you're building your first company or bringing a proven venture into unfamiliar markets, Smile Group is your partner from first hire to market leadership.
At the core of our philosophy is building alongside, not advising from the sidelines. We’ve lived every chapter of entrepreneurship many times over: successes, failures, lessons learned and mistakes made. Our insights come from doing the work: we know the grind, the blind spots, the pressure points.
Over a couple decades of shaping successful businesses, our model has evolved into two mission-driven strategies.
🚀 First, our venture builder:
For first-time founders, we embed at the idea stage (often before there's a product, sometimes before there's a team). The first cheque is pre-angel, pre-VC, and from our balance sheet, so there’s no worries about an exit clock. We take concentrated ownership, working behind the scenes on ops, hiring, and strategy, while opening doors to our network of partners and follow-on capital.
🌍 Next, our market entry platform:
For companies that have won their home markets with a proven product and real traction, we're the bandwidth to become dominant in Asia: talent, capital and local know-how. Our GTM acceleration deliver in months what usually takes years: a day-one team of engineers and ex-founders, customers and distributors already in the room, offices staffed, multiple markets live at once.
By adding proprietary capital to these approaches, we commit to staying present through the highs and lows of the journey. Our Capital arm enables the success of Venture Builder and Market Entry.
Who we are not.
Who we are.
Who we are not.
Who we are.
gurus
preachers
We’re active, hands-on builders: pull-based, having scaled businesses across AI, travel, media, software, and gaming.
armchair advisors
Each venture gets dedicated time + energy from an ex-entrepreneur; we’ve collectively created $20B+ in equity value.
third-party capital
LPs
We back ventures with evergreen capital from our own balance sheet. Our conviction = our proprietary capital.
lead-gen vendors
sales outsourcing
Lead counts aren’t the main metric. We build the market position, relationships and GTM infrastructure that outlast any single sales cycle.
portfolio-wide support
Quality > quantity. We commit 20%+ bandwidth and a disproportionate amount of time to each venture, rather than splitting our energy across 10 engagements.
front and center
We’re quiet catalysts, working in the background. The credit, spotlight and story belong to the founder.
cold outreach
nice emails
We’ve cultivated a global footprint of 500+ working relationships across corporates + tech startups in Asia, the Middle East and Silicon Valley.
decision-makers
You know your business best. We don’t back-seat drive or call the shots — we provide the context for easier, informed decisions.