2am VC Launches Second Fund To Back 30 Indian Startups

Early-stage venture capital firm 2am VC has launched its second fund with an aim to invest in 30 Indian startups, predominantly in pre-seed to seed stage.

The VC firm plans to invest in sectors across consumer tech, fintech, food and beverage, artificial intelligence and SaaS.

“60% of the fund will be committed to initial investments and the remaining 40% to support founders in follow-on investments,” 2am VC said in a statement.

2am VC, which has offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Los Angeles, launched its debut fund in 2021 with a target corpus of $10 Mn. 

The VC firm is led by founding partners Hershel Mehta and Brendan Rogers. Mehta brings investment experience via Mehta Ventures and has backed a number of startups in the US and India, including Zepto. Rogers is the cofounder of Wag! and brings experience to support founders in building their startups.

On launching its second fund, Mehta said, “We go above and beyond to support founders in being their hyperlocal and hyperglobal partners to introduce key relationships, arrange customers, and offer targeted guidance to support growth and achieve product-market-fit.”

A Look At 2am VC’s Portfolio 

So far, 2am VC has invested in 47 companies which includes clothing platform Newme, omnichannel startup Apna Mart, product development platform Blitzllama, B2B procurement startup Procureyard, B2B marketplace inframandi, fintech Karbon Card and others. 

In addition, the VC firm had co-invested with Titan Capital, 3one4 Ventures, Inflexor VC, 100X.VC, LSIP, Y-Combinator, India Quotient, Orios Ventures and iSeed.

Other Early Stage-Focused VC Funds 

Earlier this month, VC firm Prime Venture Partners announced its fifth fund with a corpus of $100 Mn to invest in early-stage Indian startups. The fund plans to back 16-18 startups in an initial range of $2 Mn to $4 Mn and for further investments of up to $12 Mn each in its portfolio companies over multiple rounds. 

Prior to that, A Junior VC (AJVC) closed its first INR 100 Cr fund targeting pre-seed investments in India. The VC firm had backed nine pre-seed stage startups across sectors including AI, direct-to-customer (D2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer tech business and others. 

In February, PE firm JV Ventures’ life sciences-focussed arm Innovation Acceleration Platform (IXP) launched its first fund to invest in early stage startups. The fund has a target corpus of INR 200 Cr, with a greenshoe option of INR 100 Cr.

As per Inc42 report, Indian startups funding surpassed $12 Bn across 993 deals in 2024, marking a 20% increase compared to 2023 on the back of boost in funding and investments.