Mumbai-bases early stage venture capital investor IvyCap Ventures on Wednesday said it has raised Rs 1,608 crore ($214 million), from institutional investors in first close of its third fund. The platform is planning to raise upto Rs 2,000-2,500 crore to fully close the fund. Two third of the the Fund III has been raised from its existing investors whle new ones includes banks, insurance companies, the government departments and even some family offices.
State Bank of India (SBI), insurer HDFC Life and soon to be listed Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) along with government departments and family offices.Few new institutional investors including banks, insurance companies and the government departments also invested in the fund.
IvyCap’s fund size puts it on par with other leading early stage investors such as Stellaris Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, Sixth Sense Ventures and 3one4 Capital. The new fund will continue to focus on sectors such as consumer tech, deep tech, healthtech, fintech, software as a service (SaaS) and edtech. IvyCap will use the processds to invest in 20-30 companies in their Series A rounds, with a starting cheque size of Rs 30-40 crore, with about 20% of the fund reserved for further rounds in its second fund’s portfolio.
Founded by Vikram Gupta, IvyCap raised a first Rs 240 crore fund in 2014, followed by a Rs 535 crore second fund in 2020. The platform has so far-backed startups such as beauty products etailer Purplle, jewellery e-commerce platform Bluestone, and online clothing brand Bewakoof.
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“We have proven the model of working through the Alumni ecosystem of the IITs, IIMs and a few other top educational institutions of India. Our passion lies in building the Endowment ecosystems in India. We had conceptualised the Endowment Fund model through integration with an Alumni focused Venture Capital Fund in 2011,” said Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner at IvyCap.
“Our efforts led to the formation of India’s first Endowment Fund at IIT Delhi that was launched by the Hon. President of India in October 2019. This model was then replicated by IIM Ahmedabad and a few other IITs. Today we see a substantial alumni base of 500,000 from IITs and IIMs working very passionately with us,” he added.
