Multiply Ventures Closes Its Maiden Fund At INR 260 Cr; To Focus On Fintech, Edtech, Retail & Health Sector

Early-stage venture capitalist (VC) firm Multiply Ventures has closed its maiden fund at INR 260 Cr, crossing its target of INR 250 Cr.

Multiply Ventures would now have an increased focus on early-stage deals across four core sectors—fintech, edtech, retail, and health. Starting from pre-seed/seed levels, the fresh funds would be used in investing in startups till Series A.

Being sector-focused in its investment strategy, the VC firm believes in broad concepts where India will see the emergence of trusted brands improving access to quality education, transparent financial services, affordable healthcare and authentic retail experiences. And technology will be a unifying catalyst across all sectors.

Formed by Raveen Sastry, Sanjay Ramakrishnan and Bhushan Patil, who were the former executives of Myntra, Flipkart, and Paytm respectively, Multiply Ventures received its approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to launch its VC funds in 2020. So far, Multiply Venture has invested in 15 startups including Freed, Jovian, OneCare, and Iluvia. 

It plans to invest in 8 to 10 more startups in the next 12 months. 

However, before embarking on the launch of a structured fund, the three partners first built a portfolio of 30 companies as angels. Some of the notable startups in the Pre-fund include Open Financial, DealShare, Gramophone, ShopKirana, Madstreet Den, and Skill Lync.

“We are witnessing many nascent stage startups across sectors like infrastructure, credit, digitising BFSI products, building tech-led distribution, identity systems for mass adoption, financial literacy, and inclusion. All these need expertise from the core BFSI domain…and most importantly awareness of the unit economics to build profitable businesses,” said Bhushan, who leads the fintech investment practice at Multiply Ventures.

“We as a team bring these much earlier in the business life cycles of the startups we are bringing under our portfolio,” he added.

Multiply Ventures aims to be one of India’s most impactful early-stage VCs over the next five years. 

“My experience of building Myntra, Hoopos & Nudgespot as a Founder, Bhushan’s experience at Paytm, Alibaba, and Yahoo in product, cross-border commerce & fintech, and Sanjay’s experience in consumer marketing across Google, Myntra, Flipkart & Ogilvy is what we bring to the table beyond capital and loads of empathy”, said Raveen Sastry, partner at Multiply Ventures.

Organic foods brand Nutty Yogi raised INR 5 Cr from Multiply Ventures in its seed funding round in May this year.

A few days later, Multiply Ventures, along with the likes of Y Combinator and others led the $4.5Mn seed funding round of Bengaluru-based fintech startup BharatX.

Bengaluru-based insurtech startup Nova Benefits’s fresh funding rounds of INR 71 Cr in September last year also saw participation from Multiply Ventures.