Pine Labs & Jupiter Founders Launch VC Firm With $40 Mn Corpus To Back Fintech Startups

India’s funding success story was well supported by commensurate growth in venture capital funding in 2021. In fact, Indian corporations, and their leaders in 2021 were much quicker on investing in venture capital (VC) or launching founders’ funds into emerging startups.

The newest in the line is White Venture Capital, launched by IPO-bound Pine Lab’s founder Amrish Rau, fintech Jupiter’s Jitendra Gupta and managed by angel investor Sweta Rau.

The fund, with a corpus of $40 Mn, will back fintech startups across India and Southeast Asia. It will write cheques of $250K – $1 Mn in seed to Series A rounds, with follow-up investments worth $2 Mn- $3 Mn.

Jitendra Gupta and Amrish Rau will be the VC firm’s limited partners and advisors, while Sweta Rau will be the sole portfolio manager. The trio have put in $15 Mn from their personal funds.

The firm’s limited partners reportedly include Sequoia Capital India, Japan’s Credit Saison, TVF Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, CRED’s Kunal Shah, among others

According to the VC firm’s website, the founders have seemingly collaborated their previous individual portfolio into White Venture Capital. The firm currently showcases that its portfolio includes fintech M2P, CRED, Khatabook, DotPe, SafePay, among others. It has also invested in some non-fintech startups such as social platform Mitron, lifestyle brand Bira, Q-commerce app Dunzo, among others.

The total funding in 2021 in India’s fintech ecosystem in the country (the highest among all sectors), stood at $7.97 Bn across 280 deals, according to Inc42 data — a 2x year-on-year growth.

Further, the growing fintech sector is worth $31 Bn, from the total financial market worth $500 Bn signalling rapid innovation and need for funds within the segment.

Based out of Singapore, White Venture Capital claims to envision institutionalising angel investing and backing “passionate fintech founders that are targeting huge markets and supported by a great team.”

Launched in October 2021, the fintech veterans’ fund is mimicking the success of recently launched funds.

Dream Sports’ venture capital fund Dream Capital was launched in August 2021 with an initial corpus of $250 Mn for investments in sports, gaming, and fitness tech startups.

Later, egaming startup WinZO joined hands with venture capital firm Kalaari Capital for a joint investment initiative called ‘The Gaming Lab’.

In July 2021, Freshworks’ Girish Mathrubootham, Eka Software’s Manav Garg, Shubham Gupta (ex-Matrix Partner) and Avinash Raghava (ex-Accel) launched Together Fund with $85 Mn corpus, to back SaaS startups.