Lightspeed India Raises $275 Mn Fund III For Early Stage Startups

US-based venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners’s Indian unit, Lightspeed India Partners, has raised its Fund III with a commitment of $275 Mn (nearly INR 2,055 Cr at current conversion rate) from global institutional limited partners. Overall, the early-stage VC firm has invested nearly $750 Mn in India since its inception in 2007.

Lightspeed India Partners’ portfolio includes some imminent startups such as edtech giant BYJU’S, energy marketplace Indian Energy Exchange, healthcare SaaS Innovaccer, hotel and hospitality company OYO, social media platform Sharechat, B2B commerce Udaan, conversational AI Yellow Messenger, digital ledger startup OkCredit, software maker Setu, hyperlocal discovery platform Magicpin, among others.

The VC firm had invested nearly $28 Mn in OYO and got somewhere between $800 Mn to $850 Mn from the partial exit in 2019. Currently, it still holds 5% stake in OYO. It also got a partial exit of around $70 Mn to $80 Mn in BYJU’S after the edtech company raised fundings from Qatar Investment Authority in July 2019. The company has got a successful exit from TutorVista and Indian Energy Exchange as well.

Lightspeed focusses on direct and cross-border businesses, generally investing $1 to $25 Mn in growth or early-stage startups seeking to disrupt or transform large markets in the domestic economy.

In 2015, the company announced its first India fund which was closed at $135 Mn. The first fund was followed by the second fund in 2018 and was closed at $175 Mn. Besides these two funds, Lightspeed has also invested in Indian startups from its global fund to participate in bigger funding rounds of these companies.

With this fund, as with each of its previous funds, Lightspeed remains committed more than ever, to its mission of partnering with bold entrepreneurs building exceptional companies of tomorrow, the company said in its press statement. Further, it will continue to work with founders to support them through their growth lifecycle – including the growth capital pool of over $3 Bn raised recently in its global funds.

In preparations, Lightspeed has also expanded Lightspeed India Advisors partnership to six partners, comprising of Harsha Kumar, Vaibhav Agrawal, Akshay Bhushan, Hemant Mohapatra, Dev Khare and Bejul Somaia.

Even Hyderabad-based early-stage venture capital firm Endiya Partners is currently raising its fund II to invest in B2B startups across healthcare, enterprise technology solutions and consumer services sectors. The firm has already raised $10 Mn (nearly INR 75 Cr) from World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and $6.6 Mn (INR 50 Cr) from Japan-based Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF Fund.