NIIF Invests $15 Mn In YourNest Venture Capital Via Its Funds Of Fund

SUMMARY

The Indian sovereign wealth fund has made its investment as Limited Partner through its Fund of Funds

YourNest Venture Capital has bagged commitments of $50 Mn for its latest fund

The fund would be invested on intellectual property-based tech startups, focussing on hardware, software, and internet of things

Early-stage VC fund YourNest Venture Capital’s $75-Mn third fund has received $15 Mn from the government-backed National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), said Sunil Goyal, cofounder & MD, YourNest.

NIIF has made its investment as Limited Partner (LP) through its Fund of Funds.

YourNest has bagged commitments of $50 Mn for its latest fund and would invest in intellectual property-based tech startups, focussing on hardware, software, internet of things, Goyal informed.

Delhi NCR-based YourNest is a ‘Pre-Series A’-focussed fund founded in 2011 to nurture global market leaders from India. The SEBI-registered venture capital invests in technology-led, enterprise-driven (B2B) and DeepTech (IoT, SaaS) startups.

“Its first fund of $14 MN started in 2012, has several potential companies in its 16-member portfolio that can individually deliver the entire fund corpus and has a visibility of a 5x return to position it in the top decile. Having completely invested in this first fund, YourNest is currently raising, and deploying from, its second fund of US$ 45 mn to invest in Indian startups with a focus on DeepTech,” YourNest’s website says.

Meanwhile, NIIF is India’s first infrastructure specific investment fund or a sovereign wealth fund set in February 2015 to maximise economic impact primarily through infrastructure investment in commercially viable projects, both greenfield and brownfield through its funds.

A few days back, NIIF scrapped plans to invest in online baby marketplace FirstCry.com. It pulled out of a deal to buy a stake in FirstCry.com being sold by an existing investor. This comes barely a couple of months after NIIF and Premji Invest had received CCI green-signal to pick up a stake in FirstCry.

Inc42 had earlier reported that the country’s sovereign fund was expected to pump in $100 Mn in the Supam Maheshwari-led marketplace.

As part of the defunct deal, SoftBank and other existing investors were supposed to dilute their shareholding to make way for NIIF.

NIIF has so far invested in five funds — INR 1,080 Cr in Everstone Capital-backed Green Growth Equity Fund, INR 660 Cr in HDFC Capital’s affordable real estate fund 2, INR 878 Cr in Multiples Private Equity’s third fund, INR 125 Cr in Somerset Capital Partner’s second healthcare fund, and INR 600 Cr in Arpwood’s Partner’s first fund, according to its website.