Japanese VC Firm Rebright Partners Is Ready To Pump Capital In Indian Mobile Startups, Launches $20 Mn Fund

Tokyo and Singapore-based VC firm, Rebright Partners that entered the Indian market last year has launched a new $20 Mn India specific fund. The funds are backed by IT sector’s Japanese corporations.

As stated earlier this month, the VC firm had announced to infuse heavy funds particularly in seed to early stage startups revamping its India operations. Brij Bhasin, who is leading the VC firm’s activities in India, had also mentioned that the VC firm was on a look out to raise its second fund focusing the Indian market.

The VC firm is interested to invest in consumer-focused mobile-only or mobile-first startups. The steep rise in the smartphone market and its users in India has initiated the interest of the firm in the domain.

Takeshi Ebihara, Founder, Rebright Partners explains that Rebright Partner is being the gateway for the Japanese VC firms to invest in Indian startups. “We have already played such a role in Southeast Asia giving rise to five companies that raised later rounds of investments from Japanese corporations.”

Ebihara, who has been visiting India for the past few months, has seen the huge demand and opportunity in the mobile space. Besides, he emphasizes on the tech caliber of Indian startup founders and mentions, “We have seen a lot of alumni of large technology corporations like Microsoft, Google and others starting their startups and have better working experience as compared to startup founders in other regions.”

The founder feels that there is a strong need for all Asian countries to learn from one another. The mobile tech space in Japan is far more progressive and the model can be replicated in Indian markets to develop the space.

Rebright is backed by leading Japanese tech corporations and has extensive investments in East and Southeast Asia, including an incubator in Indonesia.

In India the VC firm had invested in a Bangalore-based, data analytics startup, TookiTaki and NCR-based, news aggregator mobile app, News In Shorts, along with other investors.

Apart from this, there are other international corporations that are investing in Indian startups. German software maker, SAP had announced, last month, that it plans to invest in the Indian startups in the next couple of months. Besides, the other global technology companies like Google has a growth equity fund Google Capital that has invested $12 Mn in online real estate company CommonFloor and $31 Mn in FreshDesk. Whereas, Cisco had announced a $100 Mn fund to invest in IoT startups. Also, to mention the homegrown player Infosys, announced $250 Mn ‘Innovate In India Fund’ For Startups just a few days back.