Playbook Partners To Infuse $20 Mn Each In 12-15 Startups Over 2 Years

SUMMARY

Choudhury told news agency PTI that the firm will focus on companies with over INR 100 Cr turnover across sectors such as SaaS, ecommerce, healthtech, among others

He also said that the firm is in the final stages of closing deals with three companies and these will be announced in the next quarter

Playbook emerged out of stealth mode in September last year and announced the first close of its maiden $250 Mn fund at $130 Mn

Former Reliance Jio president Vikas Choudhury-led VC firm Playbook Partners is looking to infuse around $20 Mn (around $174.5 Cr ) in 12-15 startups each in the next two years.

Choudhury told news agency PTI that the firm will focus on companies with over INR 100 Cr turnover across sectors such as SaaS, ecommerce, healthtech, climatetech, among others.

He also said that the firm is in the final stages of closing deals with three companies and these will be announced in the next quarter.

Playbook emerged out of stealth mode in September last year and announced the first close of its maiden $250 Mn (about INR 2,099 Cr) fund at $130 Mn (about INR 1,091 Cr).

The founder then informed that Playbook will make its first investment in the next few weeks and has over 200 growth-stage startups in the pipeline for potential investments.

At the time, Choudhury told Inc42 that the sector-agnostic fund would look to back growth and late-stage startups across Series B, C and D rounds.

Prior to founding Playbook, Choudhury was a partner at Pivot Ventures, which counts the likes of Stripe, SpaceX, Policybazaar, Nazara Technologies, InMobi, Myntra, and Fractal, among others, in its portfolio.

Besides Choudhury, Playbook’s leadership team also includes ex-McKinsey executive Dushyant Singh and former Sistema Asia Capital’s senior partner Sumit Jain.

Its operating partners include Asian Paints’ vice chairman Manish Choksi, Aakash Education’s founder and CEO Aakash Chaudhry, and EY’s partner and COO Milan Sheth. It also counts Nazara Technologies founder Nitish Mittersain, and InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari, among others on its advisory board.

The development comes at a time when a number of new funds are being launched for the Indian startup ecosystem amid the receding funding winter. Last year, 81 new funds worth over $8.7 Bn were launched for startups.

This trend has continued in the ongoing calendar year as well. Last week, Prime Venture Partners announced its fifth fund with a corpus of $100 Mn. Last month, JV Ventures’ life sciences-focussed arm Innovation Acceleration Platform (IXP) also rolled out its first fund with a target corpus of INR 200 Cr.