Unicorn India allocates Rs 400 crore second equity fund to invest in startups

Mumbai-based venture Fund Unicorn India Ventures has announced the launch of its 2^nd equity fund aimed at investing in early-stage startups. The Fund size is Rs 400 crore and the first close is expected at Rs 150 crore by the year-end. The Fund II will look to invest in Pre Series A and Series A in sectors like B2B, SaaS, fintech, health tech, robotics, gaming, and digital content.

Unicorn India Ventures will be raising capital for Fund II from institutional and large family offices in India and overseas and start deploying it by end 2019.

According to Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, Unicorn launched its first fund in 2015 and since then it has invested in a variety of startups ranging from consumer internet to on demand to media tech. Around late 2017, Unicorn actively started scouting for investment opportunities in more tech-heavy sectors like AI, Robotics, IoT, 3D cybersecurity and fintech. "Today, our portfolio from the first fund is one of the best performing in the industry and we hope to continue our track record with the launch of the 2^nd fund," commented Joshi.

The investment philosophy would be to enter at an early stage with an average investment size of Rs 3 – 5 crores and follow up to Series A and B by backing high potential startups. The investment size has the potential to go up to Rs 10-30 crore in follow on rounds.

This is Unicorn Ventures 3^rd fund globally as Unicorn India last year also announced the UK -India cross-border fund in partnership with UK-based early stage VC AscensionVentures, which has invested in six growth stage companies in the UK so far.

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures says, “Having a cross border fund helped us in getting insights from the matured economies eg the rise of neo banking in the fintech space in the UK, a global market leader in fintech. That is how when Open Bank came to us, we were aware of the emerging business model and were ready to invest. This gives us a boost and a belief that we have a knack to spot a potential winner in the early days. These factors compounded with the fact that we think like entrepreneurs and stay aligned to their macro vision have resulted in the success of our first fund.”

From the first Fund, the winners were Open Bank, SmartCoin, Sequretek, Pharmarack, and NeuroEquilibrium. The Fund also backed some business ideas in their nascent stage like Genrobotics, a robotic machine to eliminate manual scavenging and Open app, an AI-based smart locking solution.