Bengaluru: Early-stage venture capital firm Inventus Partners has closed its latest and third fund at ₹369 crore as it looks to step up investments, said the firm on Wednesday. The fund, which consists of 75% of domestic capital, hopes to invest in 10 companies in the next two years with a significant chunk saved for follow on rounds.
Last year in July, the firm has raised around ₹200 of the total corpus, post which it made around five investments.
“We have exceeded our target of ₹325 crore and also managed to do it in the time frame given to us and did not seek an extension," Rutvik Doshi, managing director at Inventus Capital, told Mint. “We have been able to identify sectors ahead of the fad which helped us successfully raise capital and on time."
The new fund is expected to invest in a mix of B2B and B2C companies across sectors such as consumer apps, deep tech, hardware along with software and machine learning.
This is the firm’s third fund overall and is the first one to be raised on their own by the partners Doshi, Samir Kumar and Parag Dhol, with an independent investment committee (IC). Inventus Capital raised its first fund of $51 million in 2009 and the second one closed at $106 million in January 2014.
Kumar said that Inventus has been able to exit its portfolio companies and deliver a net internal rate of return (IRR) of around 20-25% for its first fund. Similarly, the firm is on the cusp of exiting two of its firms from the second fund, expecting a similar IRR.
Some of its previous exits include its stake sale in online bus ticketing platform redBus which fetched the firm a 10x return which was around a $25-million payout. Apart from this, Inventus also exited hospital information management solution provider Insta Health when it was acquired by Practo for $12 million. It also exited Genwi after it was bought out by Persistent Systems.
Inventus Capital’s fundraise comes at a time when several early-stage venture capital firms are in the process of raising funds.
Accel Partners, the earliest backer of Flipkart, is expected to raise $700 million, according to a Time of India report. Moreover, Sequoia Capital has extended its $695 million India and Southeast Asia fund by $200 million, according to an Economic Times report.
The report further added that Chiratae Venture Partners (formerly IDG Venture Partners) plans to raise about $300 million; Lightspeed Venture Partners is looking at raising $200-250 million, and Kalaari Capital is in the process to raise $200 million.
