Falcon Edge’s Latest India Fund To Back Ecommerce, Fintech, SaaS Startups

US-based investment firm Falcon Edge Capital has set up a new venture capital fund of $300 Mn for India. Backed by limited partners (LPs) from the UAE, the new fund will also invest in Southeast Asia. The main areas of focus will be early-stage startups across ecommerce, fintech, SaaS sectors with a preference for B2B startups.

“The new vehicle — Alpha Wave Incubation — is in the final stages of closing the corpus and expects to make 30 deals in 12-15 months,” unidentified sources were quoted as saying by TOI.

The investments from the new fund will range from $50K to $5 Mn. According to the report, it will be one of the largest pools of capital for early-stage investments.  The portfolio companies from the new fund will also need to set up a presence in the UAE, though exact details of this arrangement are still being worked out,” sources added.

The fund will also continue to invest in late-stage companies through different pools. “The firm, which has over $3 Bn in assets across public and private markets, recently finished committing India Disruption Partners a $100 Mn,” said the sources.

Global Investors Upbeat On Indian Startups

Falcon Edge has been an early backer of India’s startups. Falcon Edge’s first investment in India was in real estate listing platform Housing.com. The VC firm is also an investor in Ola, where it participated in the $400 Mn Series E round led by DST Global and led the $500 Mn funding round, participated by Tiger Global Management LLC and Softbank Corp.

Falcon Edge also backed Quikr during its early days and had participated in a $25 Mn Series C round in mobile payment services provider Mswipe. Its portfolio also includes Stanza Living, logistics optimisation startup Locus, dockless scooter-sharing platform Bounce, social commerce firm DealShare, vPhrase Analytics, digital lender OfBusiness and non-banking financial company JM Financial Credit Solutions.

Sequoia Capital is also the most active VC in the Indian startup ecosystem last year. It was announced last month that the firm may soon launch a $1.25 Bn fund for India, which would be the largest venture fund for Indian startups to date.

The upcoming fund will be 80% larger than the $695 Mn raised by Sequoia for its sixth India fund in 2018. So far, the $920 Mn raised by Sequoia in early 2016 is the largest fund raised for India. Sequoia has been an early backer of Indian unicorns such as BYJU’s, OYO, Zomato and Ola.

It has made more than 200 investments in India and Southeast Asia so far with other unicorns such as Mu Sigma, Freshworks and Druva also featuring in its portfolio. It has also invested Freecharge, Pine Labs, and JustDial among other early-stage startups through its Surge accelerator.

Global investor Tiger Global Management also reportedly closed a $3.8 Bn global private investment vehicle called the Private Investment Partners (PIP) XII, which will continue to back tech startups in India, US and China. The investment firm’s previous fund PIP XI also raised $3.8 Bn when it closed in 2018 exceeding its initial target of $3 Bn.