Mumbai: A91 Partners, which has backed prominent startups such as HealthKart, Blue Tokai and Giva, announced on Tuesday the first close of its third India-focused fund with a corpus of $665 million, its largest till date, underscoring sustained investor appetite for the nation’s burgeoning startup scene.
“We are incredibly grateful to both our investors and the founders that have partnered with us and continue to inspire and educate us. We started… with the beliefs ..patient capital will play an important role in accelerating value creation in Indian businesses across sectors” the investment firm said in a LinkedIn post.
Founded in 2018 by former Sequoia Capital executives V.T. Bharadwaj, Gautam Mago and Abhay Pandey, A91 began with the aim of backing growth-stage companies in various sectors such as consumer goods and services (food, home and personal care, consumer service, retail, etc), financial services (specialist lending, saving, insurance, etc.), healthcare (consumption-driven pharma and healthcare services) and technology (software products and services).
The launch of the fund comes nearly four years after it raised its second fund at $550 million to invest in 15-17 companies. The fund was backed by several marquee investors including International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector investment arm, that invested $25 million into the fund. The maiden fund was raised in 2019 at about $351 million.
Some of its other portfolio companies include The House of Rare, Ummeed Housing Finance, Akshayakalpa Organic, Eat Club, Fin Box, Happilo, Atomberg and Paper Boat.
Scaling new heights
A91 Partners joins the growing list of several investment firms such as Accel, Prime Ventures, Stellaris Ventures and Bessemer Ventures that have raised funds in recent months. India Quotient is also in the market to raise its largest-ever fund at $130 million, the company told Mint in February.
Some VC firms, however, don’t plan to increase the corpus for their next funds. Blume Ventures, which will also go to market to raise capital, intends to maintain them at about $290 million for the next two funds. On the other hand, Peak XV slashed its $2.85 billion India and Southeast Asia fund by $465 million to reduce its cost of capital last year.
