Norwest Venture Partners, which has invested in Indian companies such as Swiggy, OfBusiness and Mensa Brands, on Tuesday said it has closed its new fund at $3 billion.
The corpus of the new fund -- Norwest Venture Partners XVI, LP -- is higher than that of its previous fund of $2 billion, closed in November 2019, said the venture and growth equity investment firm in a statement.
The new fund brings Norwest's total capital under management to $12.5 billion, it added.
Separately, in an interaction with VCCircle, Niren Shah, Managing Director and the Head of Norwest India, said that the average ticket size in India continues to grow, and it will also continue to do late-stage venture and growth equity investments in the country. He did not disclose the ticket size and the allocation for India.
He added that Norwest has also started doing early to mid-stage venture investments, as the India market matures.
Its investment in Thrasio-style house of brands player Mensa Brands, which is India’s fastest startup to turn unicorn, is an example of that.
To be sure, Norwest, which began investing in India in the early years of the millennium, has inked early-stage venture deals. But in early 2020, Shah had told VCCircle that as part of its Norwest 2.0 strategy, it intended to do more mid- and late-stage transactions because its ticket size had increase
Since 2019, Norwest invested in more than 60 new companies globally. In India, apart from Mensa Brands, it invested in mattress maker Duroflex, loan provider to families with low and informal income Ummeed, logistics company Xpressbees and retail affordable housing finance company Vastu Housing Finance.
“We believe that the India investment opportunity is just entering a multi-decadal growth cycle driven by robust market trends and exceptionally talented founders, and we are delighted to be raising a $3 billion fund globally, which will also allow us to enhance our investments and portfolio in India,” he added.
Norwest also saw 29 global liquidity events since 2019. In India, its liquidity events included partial exits in Five Star Business Finance and Swiggy, and full exits in Kotak Mahindra Bank and NSE.
