Despite COVID-19 caution, Gurugram-based Fluid Ventures has shown faith in supporting home-grown consumer startups by announcing its first close of INR 25 Crore as an investment capital. The early-stage micro venture capital fund has a total corpus of INR 80 Crore (including Green Shoe option), slated for investment in direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in food and beverages, beauty, personal care, lifestyle, and home products.
“Direct to Consumer is the next big wave in India. Right now, there are very few funding options available in the market for this sector. With this corpus from Fluid Ventures, we want to bridge that gap by facilitating investment in D2C brands”, said Amit Singal, General Partner, Fluid Ventures.
The COVID-19 pandemic, economic slowdown and negative growth has fostered an environment of extreme caution within the Indian investment community. As lockdowns impact supply chain management and regular business activities, investors are particularly wary of investing in D2C companies. In fact, there are only 4-5 investment institutions that are actively investing in D2C startups. In this environment, the fund will bolster confidence within such companies.
“Currently, India has one D2C unicorn startup, while there are 20 such startups in the world right now. With this initiative, we hope to open the playing field for more such success stories and encourage large investors to back startups the way they do so in the equity market”, said Dhianu Das, General Partner, Fluid Ventures.
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Fluid Ventures is a SEBI registered Alternative Investment Fund Category 1 –VCF, the first scheme is collaboration of Startup Buddy Services and Agility Ventures. With this fund, they plan to invest in 15-18 emerging brands over the next three years by participating in Seed, Pre-Series A and Series A rounds with a cheque size of up to INR 4 Crore and follow-up rounds.
The Fluid Ventures fund is guided by a solid advisory board, including Manish Aggarwal, co-founder for Startup Buddy, Prashant Narang, co-founder for Agility Ventures, Chittransh Verma, India Partner Arc Group, Rakhee Singal, Compliance Officer, Startup Buddy and Divij Bajaj, CEO, Power Gummies.
The General Partners of the fund has hands-on experience of investing in startups like PeeSafe, Junio, eBikeGo, Chqbook, Neeman Shoes,Akiva Superfoods, Power Gummies, and Vanity Wagon and has successful exited from BurgerSingh, Carmesi, Infeedo, GoMechanic, ClearDekho to name a few.
Apart from providing financial capital, Fluid Ventures Fund has a robust startup support system within the realms of recruitment, marketing, accounting, taxation, compliance mentoring, CXO coaching, fund mobilisation and legal services.
