New VC fund launched

Seedfund, perhaps the country's smallest venture capital (VC) fund, was launched here on Thursday. The fund aims at targeting small, innovative start-ups with a seed-stage funding of up to $500,000 (around Rs 2.25 crore).

The fund also provides guidance to entrepreneurs from the concept to the conceptualisation stage. The fund, which has commenced operations with an initial corpus of around $10-15 million, plans to assist.

About 20 small entrepreneurs over the next three years. It is expected to declare its first investment shortly.

Seedfund has the backing of global leaders in venture capital, who believe in supporting true innovation in the country.

The investors in the fund include VC majors, such as Sierra Ventures, Motorola Ventures, Reliance Capital and SVB Financial Group and individual investors, such as Kanwal Rekhi, K B Chandrasekhar, B V Jagadeesh and Sridar Iyengar.

The fund's managing partners are Pravin Gandhi, Bharati Jacob (ex-Infinity Venture Fund) and Mahesh Murthy (ex-Passionfund).

"There is a dire need for a true early-stage fund in India," said Pravin Gandhi, managing partner, Seedfund. "Entrepreneurs need a lot of support after they start and before they scale up to a size where they can attract a larger VC's attention. We exist to plug that gap."

Mahesh Murthy, managing partner, added, "At the seed stage, teams with big ideas need less money and more mentoring from people who have an entrepreneurial background. We hope to attract the best and the brightest business ideas and we hope we can work with the ones we select, to build great companies."