BoldCap Launches $25 Mn SaaS Fund, Eyes 15-20 Investments In Next 2-3 Years

Homegrown venture capital (VC) firm BoldCap on Wednesday (April 12) announced the launch of its second fund with a corpus of $25 Mn.

The fund will invest in early-stage B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups based out of India with global ambitions. BoldCap plans to invest in as many as 15-20 early-stage SaaS startups over the course of the next 24-36 months. 

The VC firm raised the investment from global institutions and other family offices.

“Global B2B software companies are being built out of India right now, and a lot of them are founded by product or engineering teams. This is why a GTM (go-to-market) focused early-stage fund, with collective knowledge and industry connections to help them scale quickly will sit perfectly within the existing VC ecosystem in India,” said BoldCap founder and General Partner Sathya Nellore.

Founded in 2021 by Nellore, BoldCap largely invests in pre-seed and seed-stage B2B SaaS startups based out of India and catering to global clientele. It launched its maiden fund with a corpus of $5 Mn 2021 and has so far invested in 10 companies, including Spendflo, TestSigma and Spotdraf. 

The fund claims that its Fund I portfolio startups have cumulatively raised more than $70 Mn in follow-on funding over the past 12 months. Of these, four portfolio startups already generate $1 million in annual run rate (ARR), as per the company. 

Specifying his investment thesis, Nellore said that the fund is betting on Indian entrepreneurs with bolder and global ambitions, adding that more and more SaaS companies are being built from India and for the world. 

BoldCap also claims to have partnered a group of advisors from global Saas platforms to help portfolio companies drive global sales and drive growth.

The development comes at a time when the Indian  startup ecosystem is facing a funding drought. Funding raised by Indian startups declined 75% year-on-year (YoY) to $3 Bn in Q1 2023. 

Despite the funding winter, the enterprisetech sector continued to be a sector of choice for investors. The space emerged as the third highest funded sector in Q1 2023 with $194 Mn funding. It also topped charts in number of deals in the period under review with 41 transactions. 

The interest is largely led by a high quality and cheap developer pool available in the country. Alongside, SaaS applications have global use and can just be scaled up by tweaking certain aspects of the system to fit the requirements of global clientele. 

As per a report, India SaaS companies have the potential to gross $50-70 Bn of global revenues by 2030 pointing to the growing prominence of Indian SaaS startups. 

Even though the SaaS spending is down globally and many Indian SaaS companies have undertaken layoffs, the space continues to grow. This has been visible in the funding raised by Indian enterprisetech startups and other SasS-focused funds. 

Last week, VC firm Iron Pillar closed a $129 Mn fund focused on Indian Series B and Series C stage SaaS startups. Prior to that, Spendflo bagged $11 Mn in a funding round led by Prosus Ventures and Accel, which also saw participation from BoldCap. 

In March, airline retailing-focused SaaS platform Mystifly also closed its $8 Mn pre-Series B funding round with investment from Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund.