Kae Capital closes Rs 767-cr fund for investment in start-ups

Venture capitalist Kae Capital has raised Rs 767 crore under a fund which will make early-stage investments in start-ups, the firm said on Thursday.

The family offices of Kris Gopalakrishnan (Pratithi), Shashi Kiran Shetty (All Cargo), Sunil Kant Munjal (Hero Enterprise), SRF Family Office, Hemendra Kothari (DSP), Taparia Family Office, and Shashank Singh (Apax) have backed the fund. “Kae Capital, a pioneer of early-stage investing in India has closed its Fund III, raising Rs 767 crore,” the firm said in a statement.

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The sector-agnostic fund invests in pre-seed to pre-series A stages of a company’s lifecycle in the range of USD 1-3 million. Kae is targeting to invest in 25 companies through this fund and will look at sectors like B2B commerce, Consumer tech, SaaS, Fintech, D2C etc, the statement said. The Fund III has received backing from Old Mutual Wealth, Velo Partners, and Finext, while some of the Indian ones are HDFC Holdings and SIDBI.

The list of contributors the Fund III includes marquee founders Rajesh Yabaji (Blackbuck), Ashish Hemrajani (BookMyShow), Nitish Mittersain (Nazara), Srikanth Velamakanni (Fractal Analytics), Deep Kalra (MakeMyTrip), and Jitendra Gupta (Jupiter). “The Indian startup ecosystem has grown exponentially since we started Kae Capital 10 years back. Having been around for so long, we have understood how tough it is to build great companies,” Kae Capital, Founder and Managing Partner, Sasha Mirchandani said.

Kae Capital has invested in 79 start-ups, with a portfolio enterprise valuation of USD 8.52 billion and has made 14 exits. Kae has been the first institutional investor in companies like Tata 1MG, Zetwerk, Porter, Healthkart, Wysa, Fynd etc.