Inflexor Ventures on Thursday announced the final close of its fund at over Rs 600 crore, surpassing its initial domestic target corpus of Rs 500 crore. Inflexor Technology Fund was launched in early-2020 and had marked its first close at Rs 230 crore in August last year. The Fund intends to invest in around 25 start-ups over the next 3-4 year period. Investors in the Fund include SBICap Ventures, SIDBI (from Fund of Funds for Startups), Survam (Sumankant Munjal Family Office) and some of India’s top marquee family offices and ultra-high networth individuals (UHNIs), including founders of many technology companies, according to a statement.
The sector-agnostic technology fund aims to invest primarily in B2B/enterprise start-ups leveraging deep tech, technology IP and innovation to solve real-life problems that have domestic as well as global markets potential, it added. The Fund will participate in pre-series A to series B rounds with initial cheques ranging from Rs 5 crore to Rs 20 crore and follow-on rounds based on portfolio company performance and funding stage. Inflexor has so far invested in four start-ups from its fund Steradian Semiconductors (that develops AI-based surveillance systems for autonomous vehicles); PlayShifu (which makes AR based EduTech toys); Vitra.ai (an AI-ML based content translation platform); and Kale Logistics (an AI and blockchain enabled logistics tech company).
The Fund is also working on 2-3 other late-stage deals, which it hopes to announce in the near future. The focus sectors for the Fund include fintech, healthtech, consumertech, agritech and others, along with futuristic sectors like spacetech, the statement said. Besides the capital, the Fund team adds value to portfolio companies by lending its experience for the growth, scalability and global markets expansion of its startups, it added. “We started the fund raise during the first wave of COVID-19 last year and did the final close during the second wave. Despite the tough conditions, we are happy that we exceeded our domestic fund corpus target,” Inflexor Ventures Managing Partner Venkat Vallabhaneni said. While the pandemic posed serious challenges globally, it has also acted as a catalyst for technology-based automation and digitisation efforts around the globe, Vallabhaneni added.
“…we hope to invest in start-ups that will benefit from this trend that was underway even before the onset of the pandemic. “We thank all our investors for joining the Fund as LPs (limited partners) and we hope to also leverage their expertise and reach to provide further value add to our portfolio companies,” Inflexor Ventures Managing Partner Jatin Desai said. This is the second fund launched by the duo. Their first fund, Parampara, was launched in 2015 and invested in 12 start-ups including PlayShifu; energy-efficient smart appliances manufacturer Atomberg; AI-based human emotion recognition platform Entropik; satellite propulsion systems manufacturer Bellatrix; and cybersecurity company Cloudsek.
Pingback: IMFCE Gita Gopinath, NASA scientist Kamlesh Lulla among 34 immigrants