Piper Serica Raises INR 75 Cr For Its Angel Fund To Invest In Early-Stage Tech Startups

Mumbai-based portfolio management firm Piper Serica Advisors on Thursday (January 19) said it has raised INR 75 Cr for its angel fund to invest in early-stage tech startups. However, it did not disclose the name of the investors.

Piper Serica Advisors launched the Category 1 Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) with a corpus of INR 100 Cr last year to invest in startups.

In a statement, the company said that it expects to raise the remaining INR 25 Cr in a couple of months to invest in startups with “exponential growth models”.

The angel fund has so far invested an undisclosed amount in commercial EV leasing platform ALT Mobility, fintech startup Crediwatch, dark store platform ZFW Dark Stores, digital gaming marketplace Driffle, and SaaS startup Oditly.

With a deal pipeline already in place, the fund aims to close 8 more deals by March end, the statement said. Without naming any company, Piper Serica said that it will invest in a supply chain management startup, a CRM tech startup, a cybersecurity company, and a learning management solution company, among others.

Piper Serica said it is using its proprietary AI, ML-based tool called Yoda.ai to screen investment opportunities.

“We are investing in several high-quality companies and expect to have very profitable exits from them in line with our strategy. We are very happy with the presence we have created in the startup ecosystem. We are seeing very high-quality deal flow from other funds, platforms, and directly from founders,” Abhay Agarwal, founder and director of Piper Serica Advisors said.

Piper Serica, founded in 2003, facilitates Indian and international investors in making investments in the Indian equity market. It helps its portfolio companies scale up by helping them acquire clients, build teams and raise further rounds of capital. It takes a collaborative approach to investing with other like-minded investors.

At the launch of the angel fund, the firm said that it would invest between INR 2.5 Cr-INR 3 Cr each in about 30-40 startups over the next three years, and added that it planned to stay invested in its portfolio companies for a period of up to 10 years.

Despite the ongoing funding winter, investors seem to be bullish about the Indian startup ecosystem as a large number of new funds have been launched over the last year or so.

According to Inc42 data, 2022 saw the announcement and launch of 126 funds, including venture capital funds, micro funds, corporate VC funds, and debt funds, as against 61 funds in 2021. These funds cumulatively raised over $18 Bn to invest in Indian startups as against $6 Bn in the previous year.