Fireside Ventures Closes Fund II At $118 Mn; Sees Partial Exit From boAt

Bengaluru-based venture capital firm Fireside Ventures that invests in consumer brands has announced the final close of its Fund II at INR 863 Cr ($118 Mn). The company had targetted a corpus of INR 750 Cr (approximately $100 Mn) in this round, but raised an additional INR 113 Cr ($18 Mn) through the greenshoe option.

About 100 limited partners (LPs) have participated in the fund, with 30%-40% of the LPs returning after investing in Fireside’s Fund I. Some of the prominent LPs in the second fund are Small Industrial Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Nippon India, Pidilite, L’Oreal Paris, Bajaj Holdings and PremjiInvest, among others.

“It is a mark of confidence that the fund I investors have shown with a repeat investment in the new fund,” Kanwaljit Singh, managing partner and founder of Fireside Ventures said.

Fireside Ventures’ Consumer Portfolio Burgeons

The VC firm had announced the first close of Fund II at $60 Mn in November 2019. It has used the capital to invest about INR 70 Cr ($9.5 Mn) overall in women’s wellness brand Gynoveda, yoga studio chain Sarva, health food brand for children Slurrp Farm and D2C fashion brands Fablestreet.

Launched in 2017 by Kanwaljit Singh, Vinay Singh and V.S. Kannan Sitaram, Fireside Ventures focusses on investing in consumer brands across sectors such as food and beverages, personal care, lifestyle and home products etc. The venture fund has been making early-stage companies and has deployed capital across 22 brands till date.

Fireside had closed its Fund I at INR 340 Cr ($48Mn) in 2018, after raising capital from Unilever Ventures, Emami Ltd, ITC Ltd, Premji Invest, Westbridge Capital, Mariwala Family Office, Sanjiv Goenka Family Office, and Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise Investment Office. The company has invested in 18 startups through Fund I.

It has already invested 90% of capital from Fund I, and is reserving the rest for follow-on investments.

Two Exits, 8x Valuation Jump In 2020 For Fireside

Fireside Ventures’ portfolio includes consumer brands and startups such as Azani, Yoga Bar, Bombay Shaving Company, boAt, MamaEarth, The Ayurveda Experience, Samosa Singh, Kapiva and others. The company was also an investor in smart vending machines startup Kwik24, which was acquired by BigBasket, giving Fireside an exit.

The VC firm has partially exited consumer electronics brand boAt after it raised $100 Mn from an affiliate of Warburg Pincus, to localise production and push into new device categories. Though Fireside Ventures did not disclose any transactional information about the exit, it emphasised that it was more than what they had expected.

Beyond this, Fireside Ventures has highlighted that the annual revenue run-rate (ARR) of its portfolio companies has increased 15x since their investment, and their valuation has grown about 8x. These portfolio companies have also raised about INR 1,500 Cr ($205 Mn) of external funding till date.

Fireside Ventures is currently on a lookout to invest in more companies, and has assessed more than 1500+ companies so far. It is looking at 100+ companies per month to make its next set of investments. “The value of the 18 companies from Fund I has already increased by 12x and we are seeing some great traction in growth in most of these companies taking the total valuation to over a billion dollar,” Singh said.