GrowthCap Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm floated by former BharatPe chief business officer Pratekk Agarwaal, has marked the first close of its maiden fund, nearly six months after launch.
The firm, which aims to invest in startups across sectors such as fintech, deeptech and software-as-a-service (SaaS), said on Tuesday that the first close of the fund was done at Rs 20 crore.
The fund is a single general partner SEBI-registered category-II alternative investment fund (AIF) and aims to raise a total corpus of Rs 50 crore (around $6 million).
The fund’s limited partners (LP) include Beerud Sheth of Gupshup, Shankar Vailaya of ShareKhan, Naresh Naik of Irep Capital, former Kotak executive Deepak Sharma, Ankur Jain of Incred, Sanjit Nagarkatti, and Gaurav Bhojak of IIFL.
With an average ticket size of Rs 2-6 crore, GrowthCap will seek to invest in 10-12 startups in the next 20 months across their seed to pre-Series A rounds.
"For our inaugural fund, we have selectively garnered investments from operators who have built large organizations," said Agarwaal, who is also general partner at GrowthCap Ventures. “This exclusive funding opportunity is by invitation only.”
Agarwaal added that the firm plan to launch a winners fund with an estimated corpus of Rs 250 crore.
Agarwaal is an alumnus of IIM-Kozhikode and has been previously associated with companies such as Bajaj Finserv, Fullerton India, Indostar Capital and ftcash. He is also an angel investor, having backed more than 35 companies to date, including Decentro, FidyPay, Klub, Karmalife, Fundly, Transbnk, EximPe, Finsire, Threedots, Coffeee.io, Coverself and PumPumPum. He also serves as an adviser to many startups.
Agarwaal is also the founder of Trutes Advisors, a boutique operator advisory firm with a primary focus on fintech, digital lending startups and the NBFC ecosystem in India. He also cofounded SelFin India, a fintech startup that focused on hybrid digital lendin
