Jungle Ventures Fund IV Secures $25 Mn From IFC; To Invest In 20 Startups

World Bank’s investment arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) has committed to investing $25 Mn in Singapore-headquartered venture fund Jungle Ventures, which plans to raise $300 Mn as part of its Fund IV. Additionally, IFC is considering a delegated authority co-investment envelope for an additional amount of up to $25 Mn for potential co-investments with the fund in its portfolio companies

Jungle Venture plans to use this Fund IV to invest in 15-20 early-stage startups across consumer internet, fintech and business-to-business (B2B) segments. Besides that, it will also look to invest in small and medium enterprise (SME) technology-focused companies.

The VC firm had closed its first fund in 2012 at $12 Mn and its second fund in 2016 at $100 Mn. Jungle Ventures’ latest fund or Fund III was closed in October 2019 at $240 Mn. The fund III was backed by Cisco investments, DEG, Temasek Holdings, Bualuang Ventures and International Finance Corporation (IFC), along with John Kin of HomeAway (President) and Singapore-based entrepreneur Kuok Hong.

Founded in 2012 by Amit Anand and Anurag Srivastava, Jungle Ventures typically participates in Series A and B funding rounds, with a cheque size of $10 Mn and above. The company had recently led overseas education guidance and financing platform Leap’s $17 Mn Series B funding round. Apart from this, it also invested an undisclosed amount in insurtech startup Turtlemint’s Series D round of $46 Mn  last month.

Jungle Ventures, which invests in startups across Southeast Asia, portfolio includes decor and furnishing platform Livspace, ticketing platform BookMyShow, B2B ecommerce platform Moglix,  workforce management. Betterplace, SaaS platform for SME Deskera and others. The VC firm has also successfully exited consumer credit enablement platform PaySense and in-app ad platform Pokkt. Overall, Jungle Ventures have invested in over 30 startups.

Indian startups are bound to raise a whooping $13.7 Mn in 2021, as per Inc42 Plus estimates. However, the segment noted a 33% year-on-year decline in the first quarter, as the startup funding dropped from $4.1 Bn in Q1 2020 to $2.73 Bn in Q1 2021. However, things do look promising as more than $3 Bn was invested in the India startup ecosystem in the first three weeks of April 2021.

As far as the early-stage funding is concerned, the first quarter can be considered encouraging for Indian startups seeking seed or early-stage funding. Over $125 Mn of seed funding was poured into startups in Q1 of 2021, compared to $150 Mn invested in Q4 of 2020 (16% decline), but a 17% increase from $107 Mn in Q1 2020. The average ticket size fell from $2.2 Mn in Q1 2020 to $1.5 Mn in Q1 2021, as per Inc42 Plus’ The Indian Tech Startup Funding Report Q1 2021 report. The top 10 active investors of Indian startups cumulatively cracked 118 deals.

With BlinC Invest, Jungle Venture, Sequoia Capital and others closing their funds in the last couple of months, the early stage funding scenario may also see a rise in this year.

Only last week, another VC firm BlinC Invest announced the first close of its $13 Mn (INR 100 Cr) alternative investment fund (AIF) at $4 Mn (INR 30 Cr) to invest in 5-7 early-stage edtech and fintech startups.