IIFL Wealth Launches INR 750 Cr Fund-Of-Funds To Partner With VCs

IIFL Wealth, the wealth management arm of financial services company India Infoline, will launch an INR 750 Cr fund-of-funds to partner with tech-focused venture capital funds. Through this partnership, IIFL Wealth will invest in its partner VC firms’ best performing digital companies. 

The corpus will be raised from the company’s network of ultra-high-net-worth individual (UHNI) clients and will be used to help fast-growing tech startups meet their capital requirements for expansion or scale. 

“The IIFL Equity Opportunities Fund aims to provide a unique opportunity to invest in the best-in-class technology-focused VC funds primarily providing follow on capital to their top-performing digital companies along with other marquee investors,” Umang Papneja, CIO of IIFL Wealth, said.

Papneja added that the company’s new fund-of-funds, a category III Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), is in talks with funds such as Orios, Blume and Kae Capital and has already received commitments worth INR 150-200 Cr. 

The company has said that the follow-on capital would be for companies engaged in the edtech, fintech, healthtech, ecommerce and mobility sectors that are looking to raise Series B funding or higher. 

In 2018, IIFL had launched a fund in association with Blume Ventures, called the Blume Ventures (Opportunities) Fund IIA, with a capital commitment of INR 300 Cr. Some of the companies which the fund had invested in, include Unacademy, Grey Orange, Dunzo, Turtlemint, Servify, Purplle, Intrcity, Milkbasket, Cashify and Tricog

In 2015, IIFL had launched an INR 400 Cr fund to invest in digital companies, which it claims, has been fully deployed and investors are now getting returns on their bets. 

Meanwhile, the funding scenario for the Indian startup ecosystem has recovered somewhat in the third quarter of 2020 after a very slow beginning to the year. A total of $2.8 Bn was raised across 261 funding deals in Q3 2020, with deal count rising by 46%. 

Compared to Q2, the funding amount in Q3 marked a 167% increase. However, both the funding amount and the deal count remain relatively low on a year-on-year basis. As per Inc42 Plus analysis, the annual funding amount is estimated to plunge anywhere between 11% to 36%.

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