India Quotient marks final close of third venture capital fund

By Joseph Rai

  • 20 Nov 2019
Credit: Thinkstock

India Quotient has marked the final close of its third fund and has also met the target size of its opportunities fund, Prerna Bhutani, partner at the early-stage venture capital firm told VCCircle.

The final close of the third fund was made at $60 million (Rs 429.8 crore), meeting the target corpus it had set out to raise, said Bhutani.

The split between new and existing Limited Partners, investors in the new fund was equal, said Bhutani.

The new Limited Partners (LPs), or investors in the fund include a large Chinese fund, prominent Chinese entrepreneurs, some large family offices and Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, an Indian businessman with interests in the Gulf.

MakeMyTrip's Deep Kalra and Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who had invested in India Quotient's debut fund of $5 million, have also invested in the third fund.

Other existing LPs who backed the new fund include Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, and RB Investments, the family office that was founded by Indian-origin businessman Rajesh Bothra.

There is enough domestic capital that is finding its way into alternative assets like venture capital funds, because of increased interest in the startup space, Bhutani said. “While the global LPs are still watchful, domestic family offices & HNIs seem to be bullish on the growth of the startup ecosystem in the country,” she added.

She also said that while LPs used to be concerned about the size of outcomes in India, it has started to change now because of reforms. “Companies are able to access more customers, payments have become simpler, infrastructure has become better - all of this has made the India consumption story very strong,” she explained.

The new fund is looking to make 35-40 investments fund, of which we have already done 20.

India Quotient marked the first close of its third fund at $30 million last year in April.

The new fund continues to focus on consumer businesses, financial technology, and social networking. It also intended to invest more in consumer brands, thanks to the jump in its ticket size. It also expected to explore new models in health, tech, and logistics.

India Quotient had said in August it is also raising an opportunities fund.

Bhutani said that the target size for the opportunities fund was $20 million, which it has already reached. “We have now opened up the greenshoe option of $20 million,” she added. The VC firm has tied up with Kotak Wealth Management to market the fund to the wealth manager’s clients.

The opportunities fund was being raised to invest additional capital in the best-performing companies across its three funds. It has already backed companies such as ShareChat, LendingKart, and Loantap.

The Mint newspaper first reported the development.

New investment

Separately, India Quotient has placed a new bet by investing in myHQ as part of the coworking space startup's pre-Series A round of funding, said Bhutani.

The company, run by JustWork Technologies Pvt. Ltd, raised $ 1.5 million in this funding round. Other investors who participated in this funding round include Singapore-based family office RB Investments, Ashish Goenka from Suashish and angels from the online platform LetsVenture. Existing investors Anupam Mittal and Nitish Mittersian also pooled in money.

myHQ had raised $500,000 (around Rs 3.4 crore) in July last year led by Anupam Mittal, founder of People Group, which runs online matrimony site Shaadi.com.

myHQ was founded in 2016 by IIT-Delhi alumni Utkarsh Kawatra and Vinayak Agrawal.

Earlier this month, it also invested in its existing portfolio firm Lokal, a regional language news aggregator, and classifieds platform.