BigBasket Backer Panthera Growth Partners Announces First Close Of $250 Mn Second Fund

Growth-stage venture capital (VC) fund Panthera Growth Partners has launched its Fund II with a corpus of $250 Mn. According to the VC firm, it has marked the first close of the second fund and expects to close the same by FY23.

The fund will offer up to 100% of fund commitments in co-investment opportunities, Panthera Growth Partners said in a statement. The fund’s objective is to partner with consumer internet and enterprise services businesses that have achieved a product-market fit.

Singapore-based Panthera will write cheques of approximately $20 Mn for 10-12 Indian and Southeast Asian startups.

Panthera Growth Partners (not to be confused with US-based Panthera Capital), was launched in 2021 by Shilpa Kulkarni with Fund I with a corpus of $84 Mn. 

With the funds, it had backed Zebra Technologies’ Antuit AI, Tata-backed BigBasket, research firm Markets and Markets, B2B marketplace OfBusiness, foodtech FreshMenu, furniture marketplace Pepperfry, D2C women’s lingerie brand Zivame and deeptech startup Medgenome.

The startup generally backs tech companies across consumer internet, tech infrastructure, SaaS, and analytics across India and Southeast Asia.

Panthera’s Growth Stage Fund Amid The Funding Winter

The fund has been launched when the world startup ecosystem has been reeling under clutches of issues including the ongoing Russia and Ukraine war, rising inflation and interest rates along with funding winter. And India is not unaffected. In fact, venture capital and private equity firms have started painting survival strategies for their portfolio companies and the most affected of these were the growth-stage startups.

Even while the overall funding in the ecosystem was its lowest in India in May 2022, funding in seed stage startups grew by 40%. Growth-stage startups, on the other hand, saw a month-on-month decline of 62% with only $500 Mn raised across 24 deals.

Panthera’s fund comes at a time when the stage is hit more than its counterparts. In such circumstances, it plans to back revenue-generating enterprises (over cash-burning startups), which the company has made clear in its announcement statement.

Panthera Fund II has been formed to build upon the investment track record of the previous companies, focussing on investments in growth-stage technology startups that are (or are poised to become) leaders in their respective markets. It will compete with the likes of Aavishkaar Capital Fund IV, Base Capital, and Verlinvest among others.