Pre-Seed Investor Antler India Bags INR 500 Cr From Maiden Fund

Pre-seed investor Antler India has concluded the first close of its maiden fund at INR 500 Cr, intending to complete the final close at INR 600 Cr ($75 Mn). The domestic fund will focus on India and operate separately from the VC firm’s global entity.

The fund was launched last year when Antler India set out to raise INR 400 Cr base fund with a greenshoe option of INR 200 Cr. Nearly INR 325 Cr of the overall corpus saw participation from domestic pools of capital, including the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

Antler India will back nearly 100 early stage startups at the idea to pre-seed stage and will set aside a part of the fund to make follow-on investments. It writes cheques of up to $500K at a time when investing in a startup, taking a 10% stake for an initial investment.

 “We have a 1:1 reserve ratio and will reserve say approximately $27 Mn to $30 Mn for investments and almost an equal amount for the pro rata (follow-ons),” Rajiv Srivatsa, cofounder and GP of Antler India, said.

Its focus sectors include — SaaS, fintech, generative AI and startups building on large network protocols such as Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

Antler India will also recommend some of its Indian portfolio startups for follow-on investments from Antler Elevate, the global VC’s recent $285 Mn growth fund, Srivatsa added.

The early stage investor has already invested 20% of the total corpus from its maiden fund, making 27 investments including in Bold Finance, Covrzy and Hexo.ai. The VC firm will continue to deploy $20 Mn – $25 Mn annually and is expected to finish the deployment by 2025.

Earlier in August, Antler India launched a separate venture platform for founders building on ONDC, the Antler-ONDC platform. As shared by the Singapore-based VC firm, the platform will offer pre-seed capital of $300K, along with an additional investment of up to $200K, to the teams that have workable ideas.

Antler’s announcement comes as inventors active in India continue to raise funds to invest in Indian startups. Incidentally, a growing trend has been investors raising funds focused on early stage, making bets on the next generation of startups.

Some of the recently announced early stage funds include Incubate Fund Asia’s $50 Mn fund, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India’s $541 Mn VVSEAI Fund V and 3one4 Capital’s $200 Mn Fund IV.