Artha India Ventures Mops Up 61% Returns From Its Maiden Fund

Artha India Ventures Marks First Close Of INR 500 Cr Second Fund At INR 250 Cr

SUMMARY

Artha India Ventures said its Artha Venture Fund I’s distributed to paid-in capital is approaching 20%. AVF-I had a corpus of INR 200 Cr with a greenshoe option of INR 100 Cr

The family office, which has invested in 140 startups since 2012, claimed that two startups are now valued more than $400 Mn

It said that the fund, which was closed in FY19 at INR 225 Cr, is approaching its full deployment

Ashokkumar Damani’s family office Artha India Ventures (AIV) has claimed that its micro VC arm Artha Venture Fund-I (AVF-I) has generated a 61% internal rate of return (IRR) at close.

Artha India Ventures said in a statement today that the fund, which was closed in FY19 at INR 225 Cr, is approaching its full deployment. It claimed to have deployed INR 175 Cr in 32 seed stage startups from the fund. AVF-I was Artha’s maiden fund with a corpus of INR 200 Cr and a greenshoe option of INR 100 Cr.

The statement from the family office also said that the fund’s distributed to paid-in capital (DPI) is approaching 20% on the back of recently signed exit under diligence and last year’s partial exit from fleet management startup Everest Fleet.

Artha claimed to have generated a 19X return from its exit from Everest Fleet.

The fund’s total value to paid-in capital (TVPC) is said to be 3.75x in rupee terms and 3.40x in dollar terms.

IRR is a metric used by VCs and private equity firms to measure the annual return from an investment. DPI measures the ratio of cash distributions that investors received from a venture capital or private equity fund to the total capital they initially invested in the fund. TVPC is another performance metric used to measure an investment derived at by dividing the fund’s total value by the amount of capital contributed by investors.

The VC firm further claimed that two startups, part of its fund portfolio, are now valued in excess of $400 Mn.

Artha India Ventures has invested in 140 startups since its birth in 2012 from its three funds – Artha Venture Fund, Artha Select Fund (ASF), and Artha Continuum Fund (ACF). It includes the likes of OYO, Rapido and Purplle in its portfolio.

Artha has made the final investment from AVF-I and will deploy the remaining capital for follow-on investments.

Back in 2022, the family office launched an INR 450 Cr winners-only micro VC fund, ASF, to make follow-on investments in the top-performing startups from the group’s portfolio of over 100 startups, with a focus on Series B and Series C funding rounds.

AIV also claims that it has made a successful exit from its early investments from Biryani By Kilo and international payments platforms InterStellar with a 35X return.