SucSEED Indovation announces first closure of maiden Rs 100 cr fund

Hyderabad-headquartered SucSEED Indovation, an Alternative Investment Fund (AIF-1) venture capital angel fund, on Tuesday announced the first closure of its maiden Rs 100 crore fund by raising Rs 40 crore.

Through this fund, SucSEED aims to support over 50 startups till they become large enterprises over their 3-stage funding thesis.

Vikrant Varshney, co-founder & managing partner of the find said that angel investors, CXOs in large domestic and global enterprises, family offices, and few family trusts participated in the first successful closing of Rs 40 crore.

Indovation Fund has identified three startups Stargate, Auris, and Freestand for investment and has signed term sheets, he said.

Stargate is a direct-to-retail (D2R) cross-border platform for curated lifestyle products. While Auris, an AI-powered insights platform, curates insights in real-time to capture, enrich and analyse data, Freestand, a marketing tech platform enables FMCG brands to deliver physical product samples to digitally targeted customers.

The company has shortlisted three startups in the healthtech and regtech space, where the due-diligence is still underway.

He said, "The company is targeting to close 20 investments YoY, and we hope to accomplish this as we tap into new potential early-stage ventures."

SucSEED's second closing is targeted for February-March 2021, with a focus on corporate ventures, financial institutions, institutional entities, fund of funds, and family offices to join indovation for discovery & growth of the early-stage segment.

Ramesh Loganathan, co-founder of the fund said, “As one of first seed-stage VC funds, the fund has a unique longitudinal model of working with seed-stage startups helping them through three rounds of growth and funding”.

The fund addresses the under-served formal fund needs of seed-stage tech startups. The fund will drive investments in seed to pre-series A-stages and will help portfolio companies to strengthen their product offerings, go-to-market strategy, and build governance structure so that they progress to become category leaders.

“The fund has signed MOUs with many technology incubators like IITM Incubation Cell, CIE-IIITH, IIT Ropar and has started to work very closely. In the first two months, the fund has screened 200+ startup interests, and the Investment Committee has shortlisted 6 startups already for investment,” – highlighted Vineeta Gupta, head – Deal Discovery & Investment.

SucSEED Indovation Fund received the license of an angel fund from market regulator SEBI in August 2020.

The fund aims to nurture & promote Indian innovation by supporting early-stage technology-enabled startups in 6 emerging sectors such as healthtech, edtech, fintech; enterprise SaaS; cyber security & regtech; digital economy & smart living, using emerging deep-tech innovations.

Six GPs of the fund, namely Vikrant Varshney, J A Chowdary, Dhiraj Kumar Sinha, Lax Chepuri, Ramesh Loganathan, V V S N Raju, and team members have 200+ years of cumulative experience within technology, fund management, and the startup ecosystem. They have invested in 50+ companies and even founded/ exited a few of them. The fund grew out of SucSEED Angel network and IIIT Tech Ventures.

SucSEED Indovation Fund has grown out of SucSEED Angel Network and IIITH Tech Ventures, an early-stage tech seed initiative with IIIT Hyderabad Foundation. It is sponsored by serial angel investors, mentors, industry leaders and is closely associated with the startup ecosystem for a long time. The team of proven leaders in Tech & Entrepreneurship, venture capital investment, risk management, and funds and transaction management, joined together for the sole purpose of bringing tech innovation to the market.

While SucSEED Angel Network was already supporting early-stage investments, investing through Fund will bring in funds through a single entity in the cap-table of start-ups and additional focus on Sectoral research, professional handling, and enhanced investor reporting. Being SEBI registered also ensures that investments done by the Fund would meet governance and compliance standards for the investors.

Partners and team members of the fund have 100+ years of cumulative experience within technology, fund management, and startup ecosystem and have already invested in 40+ companies.