The firm is investing a large amount of its third fund to invest in approximately 25 early-stage startups. These initial investments will normally range between Rs 30 crore and Rs 50 crore. Some of the firms that have previously received funding are Dhruva Space, Snitch, Celcius Logistics, GradRight, Eggoz, and Flexifyme.
IvyCap Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that has backed firms such as BlueStone, Purplle, and Biryani By Kilo, has announced the full closing of its third fund, which totals Rs 2,100 crore.
This fund would be used to invest in approximately 25 early-stage firms, with an average initial investment of Rs 30-50 crore. It has already allocated 40% of the third fund’s capital to firms including Dhruva Space, Snitch, Celcius Logistics, GradRight, Eggoz, and Flexifyme.
IvyCap said in a statement that the majority of the funding for its third fund has come from domestic limited partners, or fund sponsors, which include organizations like the IIT Alumni Trust and nearby family offices.
The initial close of the third fund occurred in February 2022 at a value of Rs 1,608 crore. It came at a time when several Indian investment firms were raising rupee-denominated capital to fund startups. Edelweiss Alternative Asset Managers, Alteria Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners, and A91 Partners were among them.
IvyCap stated that 20% of the fund is set aside for investments in its existing portfolio firms, with the firm acting as a co-investor in these companies’ future fundraising rounds.
A war chest of Rs 100 crore has been set up for investing in seed-stage companies, which will be managed by a separate team using the IvyCamp platform, the firm said.
“We are seeing a lot of disruptive concepts while still focusing on consumer tech, health tech, fintech, B2B, SaaS, and enterprise models. These are highly disruptive topics, such as generative AI, machine learning, blockchain, and the internet of things,” said Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner of IvyCap Ventures.
“Climate tech is an area which we are quite closely looking into because globally that’s becoming the theme and we are quite actively looking at that,” he went on to say, according to ET.
IvyCap launched its first fund in 2014 with a capital of Rs 240 crore and invested in ten firms, whereas Fund II was more than double that amount, at Rs 530 crore.
According to Gupta, the initial fund aimed to raise Rs 200 crore with the concept that 25% of their income as fund managers would be distributed as endowments to IITs.
IvyCap’s first fund had a nearly 3x distribution of cash to paid-in capital (DPI), however the second fund had a 0.4x DPI, owing mostly to exits through mergers and acquisitions of companies such as Clovia, bought by Reliance, and Sokrati, acquired by Dentsu International, among others. Its initial fund generated a Rs 330 crore exit, resulting in a 22x return on investment in Purplle.
IvyCap Ventures, founded in 2011, has invested in about 50 startups across sectors including healthtech, consumer tech, deeptech, fintech, edtech, agritech, and spacetech.
