Lavni Ventures, an early-stage technology-focussed impact investor, has roped in as limited partner an entity that is backed by American private equity firm Carlyle for its second fund that was launched last year and backs deep-tech companies.
The Bengaluru-based venture capital firm's fund, which invests in deep-tech startups in climate, healthcare, energy and education, has received a capital commitment from Quest Global Engineering Services Limited, a pure-play engineering services company that also counts among its investors Hillhouse Investment, and domestic private equity firms ChrysCapital and True North.
“What drew us to Lavni Ventures is their focus on founders working on meaningful challenges in sectors including climate, energy, and health—areas where strong engineering can make a real difference,” said Ajit Prabhu, co-founder and chief executive of Quest Global.
Lavni Ventures, which received SEBI registration last October for the Category-II vehicle, is targeting to raise a corpus of Rs 200 crore ($22.8 million) for the vehicle. It marked the first close in August last year. The fund will bet on domestic deep-tech startups, deploying Rs 2-8 crore at the seed to Series A stage, and Rs 8-15 crore for follow-on investments.
Founded in 2020 by Vasu Guruswamy, Sanjay Kanvinde and Krishna Shivram, Lavni Ventures is a SEBI-registered Category-II alternative investment fund. Lavni, which means “future” in Haitian Creole, has previously backed companies in medtech, edtech, cleantech, agritech and energy.
Its first fund, the corpus of which remains undisclosed, invested in sanitary pads recycling startup Padcare Labs, heart monitoring solutions provider Monitra Healthcare and medical devices company MedPrime Technologies. Fund I was a discovery fund to validate Lavni's deeptech impact thesis.
