JSW Ventures To Mark The First Close Of 2nd Fund

JSW Ventures, the venture capital arm of JSW Group, on Monday (January 27), announced that it is set to mark the first close of its second fund at around INR 150 Cr to INR 155 Cr on February 10, 2020. For the second fund, JSW Ventures has set a target of raising INR 350 Cr, which might get achieved in the subsequent closures.

In a blogpost, Gaurav Sachdeva, managing partner at JSW Ventures, said that the promoter family of JSW Group, led by Parth Jindal continues to be the sponsor of the fund. “Jindal continues to enable us in every possible way; helps create a governance framework and enhances our vision to be relevant to the unfolding innovation in India by investing ahead of the curve,” Sachdeva added. Besides Jindal, various family offices in India and overseas and angel investors have invested in the fund.

Further, Sachdeva said that this fund will invest in startups offering consumer, healthtech, and fintech services. Additionally, it will also invest in starting software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Sachdeva highlighted that the healthcare market in India over the next six years is projected to three times and the government’s spend in healthcare will increase from 1.4% in 2019 to 2.5% of GDP in 2025. Therefore, he believes that a lot of innovation in healthcare business models is yet to come which might get added to the portfolio of JSW Ventures. “Digital data capture, edge computing, inter-operability, government initiatives, lifestyle-based disorders and AI are key drivers of our thesis for healthcare platforms,” he added.

In the SaaS domain, JSW Ventures will be focusing on retail tech, manufacturing tech, healthtech and marketing tech amongst others. Startups providing services such as in-store analytics, predictive stocking, design-to-manufacturing tech, sustainability compliance, pharma insights, data compliance in marketing, and external insights aggregation will have an increased chance to get funds from JSW Ventures.

Moreover, fintech startups offering automated decisions, specialised insurance products, disintermediation, hyper-segmentation, trustless infrastructure and digital India initiatives will get a better opportunity to raise funds from this corpus.

For the management of the fund and portfolio startups, JSW Ventures has appointed Mohit Joshi, president at Infosys Ltd; Jürgen Bauer, partner and chairman of the executive board at Tenthpin Management Consultants; and Pramit Jhaveri, ex-CEO of Citibank India. “Over the next few months, we will continue to build on the advisory board for the fund,” said Sachdeva.

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