StartupXseed Closes $30 Mn Fund II To Back Deeptech Startups

StartupXseed Ventures has closed its second fund (Fund II) after raising INR 243 Cr ($30.4 Mn). The second has been oversubscribed by 20% as compared to its initial target. 

Fund II will invest between INR 5 Cr and INR 12 Cr in 8-10 enterprise SaaS and deeptech startups in the next 12 months.

The fund has been backed by ultra high net-worth individuals (UHNIs), family offices, corporates across India, the US, Singapore, Oman and Japan, among others. Besides, former backers of StartupXseed’s first fund (Fund I) also have invested in the second fund (Fund II).

Through the second fund, StartupXseed plans to back strong founders that are capable of building enterprise solutions and sell those solutions across the globe. The startup said it will help the selected startups in product development, building growth strategies, expanding across geographies and fortifying organisational capabilities. 

“Having expertise in the B2B segment, we have helped founders to gain commendable success and our average markup of past investments is more than 6x. Couple of Fund II LPs doubled their commitment at final close after witnessing similar growth indicators on Fund II portfolio,” said BV Naidu, managing partner at StartupXseed.

Founded by B. V. Naidu, Mohandas Pai, Ramakrishna V and Ravi Thakur, StartupXseed Ventures is a business-to-business venture capital company. It primarily invests in seed-stage and growth-stage startups. The VC company is currently an investment manager of Aaruha Technology Fund I and II that backs deeptech, B2B, SaaS and spacetech startups.

“On the Investments, we primarily look at solutions where the convergence of new business models and technologies is imperative. This way, we are helping ourselves in working on next big verticals ahead of the curve. We are also spending time helping founders double to triple their Topline year on year,” said Ravi Thakur, co-founding partner of the fund.

StartupXseed has recently appointed Dr. Krishna Mikkilineni, former CTO and board member of Honeywell, as its general partner for the second fund. Besides, some of its other general partners that are managing its second fund include BV Naidu, Ravi Thakur, Sid Mookerji, Ramakrishna V, Mohan Das Pai and V. Balakrishnan.

The development has come at a time when the Indian startups are seeing a funding crunch owing to prevailing funding winter, market inflation, investors’ low sentiment and disruption in global supply chain, among others. 

However, VC companies still seem to be positive and are launching as well as leading startup-focused funds. Auxano Capital’s $25 Mn fund, Shanti Mohan’s Propell and Fundamental VC’s $130 Mn fund are some of the funds that have been launched in the last few months.

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