InnoVen Capital announces first close of new fund at Rs 740 crore

InnoVen Capital India Fund, a category II, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) registered alternative investment fund announced the first close of its new fund at about Rs 740 crore ($100 million). The fund has a target corpus of Rs 1,000 crore, with a green shoe option to raise an additional Rs 1,000 crore.

The first close was done with anchor investor Innoven Capital Pte Ltd, a joint venture between Seviora (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek) and United Overseas Bank.  

While the fund is stage and sector agnostic, the primary focus will be on sectors such as consumer Internet, business to business commerce, enterprise software, fintech, health-tech, and logistics. With first close now achieved, the fund will start deploying and already has a healthy pipeline of opportunities.

“India is now home to over 50 unicorns and the third-largest venture eco-system globally. Over the years, we have been fortunate to partner with some of the best founders and start-ups, including 17 that have achieved a unicorn status. Our portfolio companies have raised over $20 billion of external capital and are now valued at over $70 billion. We are thankful to our anchor investors for demonstrating their confidence in the team and look forward to bring in other investors as well,” said  Ashish Sharma, managing partner at InnoVen Capital.

InnoVen has backed some leading start-ups in the country including Byjus, Swiggy, Oyo Rooms, Eruditus, DailyHunt, PharmEasy, Infra.Market, Zetwerk, Moglix, FirstCry, BharatPe, boAT, Licious, Blackbuck, Rebel Foods, Ofbusiness, and others.  

“At InnoVen, we continue to champion the rise of entrepreneurship and be an active participant in the growth of the venture eco-system. The new fund will help us to engage with even more start-ups and to continue to build out a truly, unique platform which collaborates with the best founders and Investors,” said Tarana Lalwani, partner at InnoVen Capital.

InnoVen Capital is the first dedicated venture debt provider in India and a leading venture debt platform in the region. In India, it has executed over 250 transactions with more than 180 start-ups. Since 2017, the platform has disbursed approximately US $400 million to Indian start-ups.

Sameer Mansukhani, partner, said, “With record fund raising and a vibrant IPO market, we expect a multi-fold increase in formation of new start-ups, which will lead to higher demand for venture debt in the future. Venture debt is now an integral part of financing rounds and founders have a good appreciation of the product. We have built a robust pipeline and expect to start disbursing from the fund soon”.

In June this year, InnoVen found in its early stage investors study that the funding momentum from 2019 continued into 2020 with $279 million of investments being made, despite a few months of slowdown caused by the pandemic.

B2B, consumer and edtech were the most favoured sectors for surveyed investors, and as many as 74 per cent expected funding activity this year to remain at the same level or go even higher. The top sectors investors are interested this year include enterprise software-as-a-service, healthtech, fintech and edtech.