Early-stage venture capital firm StartupXseed Ventures LLP has hit the first close of its second fund that will focus on deep-technology startups, according to multiple media reports.<\/p>\n
The fund has raised Rs 65 crore ($8.84 million at current exchange rates) and expects to mop up the full Rs 150 crore over the next six to nine months, The Economic Times reported.<\/p>\n
This new fund comes almost four years after StartupXseed raised its first fund, which had a targeted corpus of Rs 100 crore.<\/p>\n
The second vehicle has received commitments from several family offices and professionals from the information technology sector.<\/p>\n
It will focus primarily on investments in the deep-technology segments, including semiconductors, cybersecurity, drones and aerospace. It will also look to invest in the artificial intelligence and machine learning sectors.<\/p>\n
The fund will look to make around 15 investments with ticket sizes ranging between Rs 3 crore and Rs 10 crore, StartupXseed managing partner BV Naidu and co-founding partner Ravi Thakur said, per the report.<\/p>\n
The firm was founded by Naidu, Thakur, TV Mohandas Pai (through Aarin Capital) and Ramakrishna V.<\/p>\n
VCCircle has reached out to the venture capital firm on the details of this new fund and will update this report accordingly.<\/p>\n
The vehicle will also look at potential investments in the financial- and health-technology sectors, and says it aims to deploy the entire corpus over the next 24-30 months.<\/p>\n
Our goal from the first fund was to stabilise the process, identify the thesis of our process and provide post-investment support, Naidu said. StartupXseed says it has made around 12 investments from Fund-I and has recorded three exits so far.<\/p>\n
Two of these are complete exits from bot management solutions provider ShieldSquare and fabless semiconductor firm Siliconch Systems. It has also recorded a partial exit from the human resources-focussed software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm Darwinbox.<\/p>\n
Last month, StartupXseed took part in a Rs 8 crore (around $1.07 million) pre-Series A funding round in SmarterBiz, an AI-based customer experience platform. Other portfolio companies include Bellatrix Aerospace and Singularity Dynamics.<\/p>\n
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Early-stage VC StartupXseed hits first close of new fund - VCCircle<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early-stage venture capital firm StartupXseed Ventures LLP has hit the first close of its second fund that will focus on deep-technology startups, according to multiple media reports. Continue reading