SUMMARY
DSGCP to now have about $200 Mn worth of assets under management
DSGCP also made first close of its growth fund at $35 Mn
Fund-III to look for investment opportunities across personal care, baby, pets, alcohol-beverages
DSG Consumer Partners (DSGCP), a consumer brand focussed venture capital fund, has made the final close of its third flagship fund at $65 Mn just four months after it was announced. The final close is more than the $50 Mn that was earlier estimated to be the total fund size and DSGCP, led by Deepak Shahdadpuri, will now have about $200 Mn worth of assets under management, doubling from when it closed its second investment vehicle two years ago.
Some of DSG’s previous investments include OYO Hotels & Homes (in which it was an early backer), Zipdial (sold to Twitter), Cleartrip, point-of-sale terminals maker Mswipe and cold press juice maker RAW Pressery among others.
Through fund-III, DSGCP will invest between $500K and $2 Mn in around 20 ventures spread over a three-year lifecycle which is almost the same funding range as that of the previous fund with the main difference being a hike in the low-end range which was $250K previously.
The third fund, which had a $30 Mn first close at the time of the launch, will scout for investment opportunities across personal care, baby, pets, alcobev, snacking, vitamin supplements, travel and hospitality, financial services, wellness, femtech and sexual wellness segments.
DSGCP, which was launched in 2012 and is headquartered in Singapore, focuses on startups operating in areas of food, beverages, personal care, healthcare, education, food production, clothing, electronics, etc.
“At DSGCP, we focus on companies that we believe can either create a category or can disrupt the existing players in the category,” Shahdadpur had said in an earlier interaction with Inc42.
DSG Consumer Partners Growth Fund
Shahdadpuri likes investing early — often pre-product, pre-revenue, and even pre-incorporation. “We work with the founders to assess the capital required to do the required new product development and then take it to market for a pilot to assess the product-market fit,” he had said.
But in April, when fund-III was announced, DSG Consumer Partners also launched a separate growth fund for its top-performing portfolio companies. DSGCP today also disclosed that it had marked the first close of its growth fund at $35 Mn. “The buildout(growth) fund is geared to invest in about 10 companies—primarily from fund-I and some from fund II, and we will not invest outside the fund,” Shahdadpuri had said at the time of the growth fund’s launch.
The growth fund, which has a target corpus of $40 Mn, is expected to have its final close in November, and will only invest in new rounds led by external investors. DSG Consumer Partners will use the existing funds remaining in fund two exclusively for follow up funding rounds in the likes of Mswipe, Veeba, Eazydiner, Chope, ChaiPoint, IndiaLends, Epigamia and others.
“These are the best-performing companies from previous funds and want to be able to take up our pro-rata allocations and allow interested LPs to get growth stage exposure to some of the fastest-growing brands,” Shahdadpuri told ET.
