Kae Capital Announces Final Close Of Third Fund At INR 767 Cr

Kae Capital Closes Its Winners Fund II At $50 Mn To Invest In Portfolio Startups

SUMMARY

The company will write cheques worth $1 Mn to $3 Mn and has targeted to invest in 25 companies

The fund marks investments from several international institutional investors, including Old Mutual Wealth, Velo Partners and Finext

To date, Kae Capital has invested in 79 startups, and its portfolio enterprise valuation stands at $8.52 Bn, with 14 exits

Early-stage VC fund Kae Capital has announced the final close of its oversubscribed third fund III at INR 767 Cr (approximately $100 Mn). The fund marks investments from several international institutional investors, including Old Mutual Wealth, Velo Partners and Finext.

In India, the fund was subscribed by HDFC Holdings, SIDBI and Backbucks’ Rajesh Yabaji, BookMyShow’s Ashish Hemrajani, Nazara’s Nitish Mittersain, Fractal’s Srikanth Velamakanni, MMT’s Deep Kalra and Jupiter’s Jitendra Gupta, among others.

Further, the family offices of Kris Gopalakrishnan (Pratithi), Shashi Kiran Shetty (All Cargo), Sunil Kant Munjal (Hero Enterprise), SRF Family Office, Hemendra Kothari (DSP), Taparia Family Office and Shashank Singh (Apax) have backed this fund.

The fund was launched in 2019, with plans to raise $60 Mn for seed-stage rounds across mobile, ecommerce, consumer internet, education and healthcare sectors. With the final close, Kae Capital said that it will be investing in pre-seed to pre-series A stages of a startup’s lifecycle.

It will write cheques worth $1 Mn to $3 Mn and targets to invest in 25 startups in sectors such as B2B commerce, consumer tech, SaaS, fintech and direct-to-customer, among others, the company said in a statement.

As of now, the company’s total portfolio enterprise valuation stands at $8.52 Bn, with 14 exits and two unicorns.

Launched in 2012, Kae Capital’s portfolio includes Tata 1mg, Zetwerk, Porter, 1K, Wysa, Bold Finance and many others. Its first fund was worth $25 Mn and the second was worth $53 Mn.

The final close of Kae Capital’s third fund comes at a time when India’s startup ecosystem is grappling with reluctance from investors’ side in backing non-scalable companies.

Profitability factor has weighed in and several Indian startups that were burning cash or working in obsolete sectors have either had to lay off their employees to reach operational profitability or shut down their operations. Yet, investors are replenishing their funds in hopes of a better year ahead.