Unicorn India Announces First Close Of Fund II At INR 90 Cr

Mumbai-based venture fund Unicorn India Ventures has announced the first close of its INR 400 Cr Fund II with a corpus of INR 90 Cr. The fund will be used to invest in early-stage startups, in Pre-Series A and Series A rounds, across several sectors — SaaS, fintech, healthtech, robotics, gaming, and digital content.

During the announcement of the fund II in July 2019, the investment firm was hoping to close the first round at INR 150 Cr by the end of 2019. For Fund II, the investment firm is backed by family offices and investors, who also participated in Unicorn India Ventures’ Fund I. The investment firm is expecting to close Fund II over the next 12 months.

Unicorn India said it would invest an average of INR 7-8 Cr ($1 Mn) into its portfolio companies, and then make follow-on investments in Series A and Series B rounds. The investment in follow-up rounds can go up to INR 10 Cr to INR 30 Cr.

“With the Fund-II, we hope to continue to identify high potential startups who are solving real problems by leveraging tech. In the tough economic and environmental times, we believe technology will play a very important role in reshaping the way we interface with others, the way businesses and trade is conducted and the way entire societies function,” Bhaskar Majumdar, managing partner at Unicorn India Ventures, said.

This is Unicorn Ventures’ third fund globally. Prior to this Unicorn India Ventures had also announced a UK-India cross border fund in partnership with UK-based early-stage VC Ascension Ventures in 2018. The UK-India fund has invested in six UK-based growth stage companies.

Besides this, Unicorn India Venture had also closed its Fund I at INR 100 Cr ($15 Mn) through which it backed over 18 companies including on-demand beauty service provider VLCC VanityCube, cybersecurity startup Sequretek, pharma supply chain enabler Pharmarack, furniture rentals company GrabonRent, a robotic machine to eliminate manual scavenging Genrobotic, neobanking startup Open, and AI-based smart locking solutions Openapp and others.

Recently, Unicorn India Ventures, along with Accion Venture Lab and LGT Lightstone Aspada, also invested INR 52 Cr ($7 Mn) in microlending startup SmartCoin.

Correction Note

March 30, 2020 | 10:00 AM
An earlier version of this article mistakenly said INR 400 Mn in the headline, instead of INR 400 Cr. We deeply regret the error.