Varanium NexGen, a fintech-focused VC fund, announces final closing at Rs 140 cr

Varanium NexGen Fund, one of India’s first fintech-focused venture capital fund announced its final close today at Rs.140 Crs. The fund invests in early-stage fintech start-ups in India.




The fund has been able to attract top-tier Indian investors as LPs. These investors include veterans from the fintech domain, family offices, financial institutions, professionals, and entrepreneurs including former CEOs and CXOs of banks.

Of the envisaged 14-18 start-ups investments, the fund has already invested in 5 start-ups and had made commitments to 3 more start-ups. It’s present investments include Homecapital (tech platform providing financial solutions to homebuyers through down payment, mortgage finance and other lifecycle finance), Riskcovry (Offering insurance in a box solution), Easebuzz (online payment aggregator with value-added services), TartanHQ (democratizing income and employment data verification through a single gateway) and Dronapay (fraud risk monitoring, prevention and detection in real-time on India stack – UPI, IMPS, etc and BNPL space).

The Fund Manager, Aparajit Bhandarkar, was an early investor/ board member in start-ups such as Bank Open, Trendlyne, Smartcoin. The Advisory board of Varanium includes Amrish Rau (CEO, Pinelabs), Pranav Pai (Founder, 3one4 Capital), Aashish Agarwal (CEO, Jefferies India). Jitendra Gupta (Founder, Jupiter Money) is an independent member of the funds investment Committee.

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Mr Bhandarkar said, “Varanium NexGen has deep domain expertise in the fintech space given our strong research and investing track record. Despite the covid slowdown, fintech space has demonstrated strong anti-fragile characteristics against the key present risks of Covid and disruption. Buoyed by the Government focus, Fintech has emerged as a Sunshine sector in India with over 15 unicorns and over USD 25 billion of capital raised. As the sponsor and team, Varanium has committed more than 10% capital in the fund, demonstrating skin in the game. Our ability to come in early into deals, connect the start-ups to customers and investors helps us mitigate risk and capture higher growth multiples.”