A91 Partners Closes $350 Mn Maiden Fund: Report

Led by former managing directors of Sequoia Capital, venture capital firm, A91 Partners, has reportedly closed its $350 Mn maiden fund.

An ET report citing two people aware of the development said that, A91 informed its limited partners that it had racked up dollar commitments of $280 Mn. Further, almost $70 Mn of the corpus was in Indian currency.

The investment has reportedly come in from private life insurance companies, high-net-worth individuals, family offices and entrepreneurs in India. While foreign LPs include The International Finance Corporation and Asia Alternatives, with others like Adams Street and Swiss-based LGT Capital Partners also participated in the round.

However, a report by Livemint has claimed that A91 Partners is nearing the final close of its $350 Mn maiden fund. The fund is expected to close official paperwork in the coming weeks. The reports couldn’t be individually verified by Inc42. Recently reports surfaced that International Finance Corporation (IFC) was looking to invest around $25 Mn (INR 177 Cr) in A91 Partners.

Launched in 2018 by V.T. Bharadwaj, Abhay Pandey, and Gautam Mago, A91 Partners is focused on making mid-stage investments, in Series B and C deals of between $10 Mn – $30 Mn.

The fund has already made investments in Mumbai-based make-up brand Sugar Cosmetics and Hector Beverages which owns popular drink brand Paper Boat. It is being further speculated that the fund will deploy as much as 65% of its capital to back consumer products and services firms, with the balance going into healthcare and financial services.

According to Inc42’s Indian Tech Startup Funding Report 2018, over 637 Indian startups raised $11 Bn across 743 deals. However, in 2018, both investor participation and unique investors have come down by 17% from 1.9K in 2017 to 1.6K in 2018 and 1.1K to 0.99K respectively.

The new investors who have joined the ecosystem includes Delhi-based angel investor Dhianu Das. He announced the launch of his venture capital fund Alfa Ventures with a corpus of INR 100 Cr ($14.08 Mn). The fund will be focusing on supporting homegrown early stage startups.

Further, the number of VC’s which invested in Indian startups in 2018 fell down to 282 from 315 in 2017. Nearly 45 funds were launched in 2018 itself, with interest across sectors such as fintech and edtech among others.

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