Purplle backer IvyCap Ventures marks first close of third fund at $214 mn

By Joseph Rai

  • 23 Feb 2022
Credit: vccircle

IvyCap Ventures on Wednesday said it has marked the first close of its third fund at Rs 1,608 crore ($214 million). 

The third fund aims to do the final close at Rs 2,000 crore and may even increase the size to Rs 2,500 crore due to huge demand, said IvyCap Ventures in a statement. 

The statement added that two-thirds of the third fund has been raised from existing investors, or Limited Partners (LPs).  

Few new institutional investors including banks, insurance companies and the government departments also invested in the fund. The fund also raised capital from many family offices for the first time, it noted without disclosing their identities. 

The new fund will continue to focus on sectors such as consumer tech, deep tech, healthtech, fintech, software as a service (SaaS) and edtech. It seeks to make an initial investment of Rs 30-40 crore in around 20-30 companies at their Series A stage. It will also reserve 20% of the new fund to co-invest in its existing portfolio firms from the second fund. 

The venture capital firm has also integrated the ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) approach in its investing philosophy for its new fund, it said.  

In an effort to focus on ESG, IvyCap recently acquired a company called Fandoro that has been doing SDG consulting over several years, it added. 

IvyCap was founded in 2011 by Vikram Gupta. IvyCap built a venture capital model around the global IIT Alumni ecosystem with endowment at its core.  

Currently, IvyCap has over 65 core mentors with an additional 5000 alumni in its inner circle of support. With every exit, the mentor trust receives a payout. 

IvyCap's first fund of Rs 240 crore was launched in 2014 and it made 10 investments. Its second fund of Rs 535 crore was launched in 2020 and it made 23 bets.  

The venture capital firm currently manages a portfolio of more than 30 companies including Purplle, Clovia, BlueStone, Biryani by Kilo, Convosight, Miko and Elucidata. It has also made six partial and full exits. 

In April last year, the venture capital firm sold its stake in Pharmarack, a healthtech platform that lets businesses automate sales and operations, to generate an annual internal rate of return (IRR) of 104%. It also partially exited Purplle last year. 

Last year, several early-stage VC firms announced fundraising milestones. While Chiratae Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and WaterBridge Ventures announced the final close of their new funds, Blume Ventures and Prime Venture Partners marked the first close of their news funds.

In January this year, pi Ventures marked the first close of its second fund at Rs 300 crore ($40 million).