Stride Ventures announces first close of Stride Venture India Fund II

Venture lending fund, Stride Ventures announced the first close of Stride Ventures India Fund II, securing commitments of Rs 550 crore out of its target corpus of Rs 1,000 crore, with an additional greenshoe option of Rs 875 crore.

Having received approval from Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in June 2021, the firm has been able to raise more than half of its targeted corpus of Rs 1,000 crores within two months since the announcement of the launch, amidst significant investor interest.

Ishpreet Gandhi, founder and managing partner, Stride Ventures, said, “With the majority of investors from our maiden fund returning to invest in the new fund, we have had a quicker-than-expected first close. Their confidence remains resolute in our mission to build innovative alternate financing solutions for founders to help scale their startups more efficiently.”

The firm will be continuing its strategy of working closely with founders and fundamentally strong companies backed by leading venture capitalists. The firm aims to ramp up deployment in late stage startups across sectors like B2B commerce, healthcare, agritech, fintech and D2C brands with average ticket size of upto Rs 75 crore.

In addition to family offices and institutional investors, the firm will diversify its investor base outside India for Stride Ventures India Fund II, on the lines of the maiden fund. Amid growing investor confidence and a maturing Indian start-up ecosystem, the new fund represents a significant opportunity for the firm to build a robust pipeline of deployments in the coming months.

Previously, Stride Ventures has invested in proven winners, including late stage and growth stage startups such as Infra.Market, Spinny, HomeLane, SUGAR Cosmetics, Zetwerk, Bizongo, Pocket Aces, MyGlamm, DocsApp etc.

Stride Ventures has made disbursals of over Rs 400 crore in 2021 through 20 investments. The firm remains on track to announce the final close of the second fund by the end of 2021. Stride will effectively have more than Rs 3,000 crore for funding startups across the tenure of the fund.