First Cheque Partially Exits D2C Jewellery Brand GIVA With 75X Return

Early-stage venture capital fund First Cheque has partially exited from its portfolio company GIVA, D2C silver jewellery startup.

Four years after First Cheque’s initial investment, the exit resulted in a 75X return on the initial investment and a 94% Internal Rate of Return (IRR), the Mumbai-based VC firm said in a statement.

First Cheque was the first institutional investor of Giva and invested INR 70 Lakhs across rounds in the startup. On the other hand, GIVA was one of the initial startups that the VC firm backed in 2019.

Founded in 2019, First Cheque focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage startups. Its other portfolio companies include Fashinza, WintWealth, Rigi, Rocketlane, FleetX, GlobalFair, DrinkPrime and The ePlane Company.

First Cheque also closed its second fund last year to invest in 50 pre-seed startups. Until now, it has made over 30 investments across sectors like B2B marketplaces, consumer internet, fintech and SaaS.

“GIVA is one of the first companies in our portfolio to deliver close to 100X returns and stands to show the potential of returns that early-stage investors could generate. The business has grown substantially over the last few years, and their current round is a testament to that performance,” Prateek Agarwal, investment lead of First Cheque, said.

First Cheque intends to invest in around 18 to 20 startups across different industries in the next eight to nine months, with a cheque size of $100K in each.

Meanwhile, GIVA raised INR 270 Cr ($32.9 Mn) in a Series B funding led by Premji Invest in July.

Founded in 2019 by Ishendra Agarwal, Nikita Prasad and Sachin Shett, GIVA deals in authentic 925 fine silver jewellery and has recently forayed into 14K and 18k gold and lab-grown diamond jewellery.

GIVA launches over 250 new designs every month. The D2C jewellery brand had over 50 stores across the top cities in India as of July, while it had plans to expand its presence across India over the next five years. It competes against the likes of Melorra, Bluestone, among others.

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