Inventus Capital Marks First Close Of Its 3rd Fund At $29 Mn

Bengaluru-based early-stage venture capital firm Inventus Capital Partners has marked the first close of its third fund at $29 Mn (INR 200 Cr) to invest in capital-efficient startups within the business-to-business and business-to-consumer spaces.

The target of the fund is $47.31 Mn (INR 325 Cr) and the company has capped at $58.23 Mn (INR 400 Cr). Inventus is looking to invest in tech-focused companies with a strong filter on capital efficiency for predominantly Series-A deals.

The Indian team — comprising Rutvik Doshi, Samir Kumar and Parag Dhol — decided to raise its own fund, along with setting up an independent investment committee (IC) as well last year.

The firm raised its first fund of $51 Mn in 2009 and the second one closed with commitments of $106 Mn in January 2014, both of which had a focus on US and India.

The partners at Inventus India expect to make investments from the new fund in areas of applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence in healthcare, sales management, industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and consumer internet companies with an element of service and enterprise software.

It typically leads the first venture round with $1 Mn to $2 Mn and as the businesses grow, it invests from $0.25 Mn up to $10 Mn.

Some of the sectors Inventus has been focusing on are Consumer, Hotels, Restaurants and Leisure, Media, Internet and Catalog Retail, Healthcare, Information Technology, Hardware and Equipment, Telecommunications etc.

With portfolio companies like online financial services player PolicyBazaar and bus ticketing portal RedBus, the company’s third fund has received nearly 65% of the money as domestic capital.

Also, a significant portion of the money has come in from Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) through the central government’s Fund of Funds.

On the development, Samir Kumar, managing director at Inventus Capital, “The big thing that has happened while we were in the market to raise money for this fund is the availability of domestic capital, which will be a big changer for the venture capital market for the next 30-40 years. And the emergence of our track record with respect to cash returns has also helped us gain confidence during this raise,” said

In the new fund, several tech entrepreneurs like Phanindra Sama from redBus, Krishnakumar Natarajan, co-founder of information technology solutions company Mindtree and BigBasket’s founders, among others have invested.

Parag Dhol, managing director at Inventus Capital said, “Early support from some of our own entrepreneurs speaks a lot about our style — that we are entrepreneur friendly and they trust us to invest in the fund.”

Some of its successful exits include redBus where it earned a 10 times return equivalent to a $25-Mn payout.

Recently, the firm exited hospital information management solution provider Insta Health when it was acquired by Practo for $12 Mn and exited Genwi after its buyout by Persistent Systems.

In the past, Inventus had focused on making investments in both India-focused startups and US-based software companies, which have a cross-border presence.

Recently, Global VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has closed its second India fund with a corpus of $175 Mn.

[The development was reported by ET.]