Chiratae Ventures To Raise $600 Mn To Ramp Up Investments In Tech Space: Report

Venture capital (VC) firm Chiratae Ventures is planning to raise $600 Mn to ramp up its investments in Indian technology startups.

Sources familiar with the development told Reuters that Chiratae will raise two funds in the coming months for this purpose. While $400 Mn will be earmarked for new investments, a $200 Mn opportunities fund will be set up for investing in its existing top-performing portfolio startups.

Investors in Chiratae’s funds will comprise domestic and international high-net-worth individuals, family offices and institutions. “A large fund will help Chiratae to invest in capital intensive sectors like electric mobility,” one of the sources was quoted as saying.

The Bengaluru-based VC firm has reportedly committed more than $950 Mn in funds towards startups in the last 15 years. The new announcements will take Chiratae’s total managed assets beyond the $1.5 Bn mark. 

Chiratae Ventures, formerly known as IDG Ventures, was founded in 2006 by Sudhir Sethi, TCM Sundaram and Manik Arora. It focuses on early-stage startups and has 100 ventures in its portfolio, including ticket booking platform Yatra, fintech startup PolicyBazaar, digital media startup POPxo. 

Earlier in February, Chiratae announced its maiden seed investment initiative Sonic. 19 startups made the cut for the accelerator programme, and included names such as Tamasha and Metadome.

Foreign and domestic investors are making huge bets in the technology domain, especially the SaaS space, in the country. Sequoia and Accel are some of the big names that have made huge investments in the segment. According to reports, Sequoia India invested $4.35 Bn in Indian startups across 74 deals last year.

According to Inc42, Indian startups raised $41.4 Bn across 1,579 deals in 2021. Technology-led enterprisetech startups raised more than $3.2 Bn in investments last year. India houses as many as 16 unicorns in this space.]

Overall, India is home to 99 unicorns. The most recent startup to enter the coveted club was Games24x7, which raised $75 Mn in a funding round led by Malabar India Fund last month.

The big-ticket funding announcements by Indian startups have continued in 2022 as well. Subscription management unicorn Chargebee doubled its valuation to $3.5 Bn after a $250 Mn funding round in February led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. Rattle, another SaaS startup, raised $26 Mn in funding this month led by Insight Partners.

A report by SaaSBOOMi and McKinsey said that the Indian SaaS sector will generate revenues between $50 Bn and $70 Bn by 2030 and will dominate 4%-6% of the global market.