Colossa Ventures raises ₹100 crore for women-focused fund

Bengaluru: Colossa Ventures has secured ₹100 crore from Ranjan Pai’s family office, , and other investors for its maiden fund—which it said has been designed to back “women-first” businesses.

The fund, which targets a total corpus of ₹500 crore, will primarily focus on investing in the health-tech, fintech, climate and clean-tech, deep-tech, and consumer sectors.

Named Colossa WomenFirst, the fund will focus “exclusively on high quality ‘WomenFirst’ businesses—either women-founded or co-founded, or where women are main beneficiaries,” the venture capital firm said in a statement. 

“Colossa’s mission is to unlock the great potential of India’s trillion-dollar women economy that is not just under-penetrated, but underinvested in, and underestimated,” Colossa’s co-founder and chief executive Ashu Suyash said in the statement.

“It seeks to do so by identifying, backing, and fast-tracking high-potential women entrepreneurs building disruptive businesses…,” Suyash said.

“We see this as an opportunity to build a unique portfolio catalysing strong financial performance,” said Vandana Rajadhyaksha, co-founder of Colossa.