SUMMARY
The company plans to expand its ticket size to $1 Mn and above with new funding
The company has invested in close to 70 startups through two funds
The company is sector agnostic that invests in early stages and expansion rounds
Early stage investor Kae Capital is reportedly in talks to raise its third venture capital fund of up to $60 Mn. With the new funding, the company is expected to increase its funding ticket size to start from a million, compared to the existing ticket size of $500K-800K.
Kae Capital is a sector-agnostic fund, founded in 2010, which invests in early seed stages. The venture capital (VC) firm also joins in expansion rounds across mobile, ecommerce, consumer internet, education and healthcare sectors.
“We prefer to be the first institutional investor in the company, so you could think of us coming in during the angel round or seed or Series A,” Navin Honagudi, the managing director of Kae Capital, had told Inc42 last year.
Kae Capital’s Funding Spree
The company has close to 70 investments, last being the epharmacy 1mg in June 2019. This year, the VC firm also invested in NBFC LoanTap, second-hand cars ecommerce platform Truebil, sanitary napkin company Nua, manufacturing service startup Zetwerk, epharmacy Healthkart and AI conversational agent Wysa.
Kae Capital founder Sashi Mirchandani is one of the earliest startup investors in India. He is the founder of Mumbai Angel network and has also invested in a lot of companies in his personal capacity before starting Kae Capital. These investees, from his personal funding, include ecommerce portals like Myntra and Flipkart, ad-tech company InMobi, and data analytics firm Fractal Analytics.
In its second fund in 2017, the VC firm managed to raise a fund of $53 Mn, whereas, in the first round, the company had raised $25 Mn. The company utilised these funding to invest in logistics startup Freightwalla, consumer brands Timla Foods, snacks brand Popicorn and omnichannel shopping startup Fynd.
Kae Capital has also been working with Mumbai-based wealth management firm to market the funds. It also aims to attract limited partners (LP) and investors in a venture capital fund through this partnership. Its current LPs include Small Industries Development BankofIndia, MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra and Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan.
