Anthill Ventures Opens Its $100 Mn Fund For Israeli Startups

Hyderabad-based investment and scaling platform for early-stage startups — Anthill Ventures — has opened its $100 Mn fund for Tel Aviv-based startups working in media and entertainment, healthtech and urbantech sectors across technologies.

Since its inception last year, the fund is already investing in Indian, Singaporean and Mauritius-based startups. So far the company has invested in 30 startups, of which 15 are from India and the remaining are from global, founder and CEO of Anthill Ventures, Prasad Vanga, told Inc42.

“The value of the portfolio as of now has grown to $20 Mn,” Vanga said.

“We find that Tel Aviv startups have a very good opportunity to scale in the Indian market. The fund generally signs the first cheque of up to $200K and the second cheque up to $1 Mn. In a particular round, we could invest anywhere from $1 Mn up to $20 Mn depending upon the quantum of capital the company requires to scale up,” Vanga said.

Anthill has already held close to 40 meetings with the founders of Tel Aviv startups. The investment firm will invest in startups to raise pre-Series A or Series A funding, along with providing marketing and sales support to scale up.

According to Vanga, Anthill fund has so far invested $2.5 Mn. It plans on investing 20% of the $100 Mn capital in 100 startups and the remaining 80% of that capital will be spent on 20% of those startups to help them grow, over a period of four years. It works in a “venture scaler” model, which will invest in companies from around the world, with good traction, to move on to new markets to scale up.

“We give them support anywhere between 6 months to 1 year to actually assist them to enter a new market, but not all the startups we invest will be included under this model. May be out of 100 startups, the best 20 will come under the venture scaler model over a period of four years,” Vanga said.

In the previous conversation with Inc42, Anthill Ventures founders have expressed that they prioritise those startups which have a technology-enabled product or service that meets the needs of the end consumer, a scalable business plan and founders’ reputation.

Some popular startups Anthill Ventures has invested include Bengaluru-based coworking space provider 91springboard, Mumbai-based crowdfunding startup Ketto, Indonesia-based short-term home rental marketplace Travellio, New York-based bot prevention solution provider SheildSquare.