Huddle Ventures’ Oversubscribed Fund II To Soon Close At INR 150 Cr

Early-stage venture capital (VC) firm Huddle Ventures said its Fund II has received strong response from investors and has been oversubscribed by 20% ahead of its final close. 

Launched in mid-2023, the fund had an initial corpus of INR 100 Cr for investment in 20 startups. However, the VC firm has activated the green shoe option following the oversubscription and is aiming for a final close at INR 150 Cr in the next four to eight weeks.

The fund has received commitments from family offices, founders, and high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), Huddle Ventures said.

The fund will have an average ticket size of $500K, extendable up to $1M, including follow-on investments, per company. It will invest in consumer brands, fintech, agritech, and healthcare startups.

The VC firm aims to deploy the fund’s entire corpus by early 2026.

Founded in 2017 by Ishaan Khosla and Sanil Sachar, Huddle Ventures launched its Fund I in 2021 and invested in a total of 25 startups. It counts the likes of sexual wellness D2C brand Bold Care, coffee chain Blue Tokai, EV companies Cell Propulsion and RACEnergy, and D2C brand CureSkin in its portfolio. 

Earlier, Huddle Ventures used to co-invest in startups with small cheques of approximately $150K-$200K. The VC firm has now changed its investment methodology.

Speaking to Inc42, its general partner Khosla said, “Earlier, we actively deployed smaller sums as compared to what we are doing today. And our investment methodology has evolved into largely being the lead/co-lead investor as part of the new companies.”

Khosla said Huddle Ventures has always tried to be among the first backers of businesses, and it is now doubling down on this strategy.

He said the VC firm has already made six investments, including in insect protein bioprocessing startup Greengrahi and D2C skincare brand Asaya, from its Fund II.

Speaking about the VC firm’s investments in the crowded D2C space, general partner Sachar said Huddle Ventures was fortunate to be the first backer of brands like Perfora and Bold Care. This, he said, helped the firm take a long-term view while making investment decisions. 

“The cliche is that we have to evaluate the founders from early on, their ability to hire a team around that has a sense of ownership, their ability to understand the space they are operating in. The other evaluation is what Huddle is bringing to the table for the companies. Because of these evaluations, 83-85% of our portfolio today has gone and raised successive rounds since we entered, 65% of them are in series A, B and C stages,” said Sachar.

Huddle Ventures, with its Fund II, aims to continue supporting early-stage ventures, enabling them to grow into established organisations. 

The latest development comes at a time when the Indian startup ecosystem is struggling to get out of the grip of the funding winter. Despite this, a number of new funds have been launched in recent times to invest in the country’s startups.

Last month, 360 ONE Asset launched a secondaries fund, ‘Special Opportunities Fund-12’, with a target corpus of INR 4,000 Cr.  Avendus also launched its late-stage ‘Future Leaders Fund (FLF) III’ with a total corpus of $350 Mn (about INR 3,000 Cr). 

Prior to that, Caret Capital and Ev2 Ventures came together to launch a new $50 Mn India-focussed fund.

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