Utthishta Yekum Fund, the debut seed fund from Hyderabad-based Utthishta Management Advisors LLP has invested $39K (INR 25 Lakh) each in three startups viz SmarterSMB, Scanova and Rapport.
Backed by M Prabhakara Rao, Utthishta Yekum Fund is the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi)-registered alternative investment fund (AIF) with a ticket size of (INR10-20 Lakh). The seed fund startup that has a fund size of over $10 Mn (INR 70 Cr) invests in startups which have a focus in B2B software, web, mobile and cloud computing picking up 10-15% stake in it. Besides providing seed fund Utthishta also provides focused mentoring to early stage startups.
Let us have a look at the three startups in which Utthishta Yekum Fund has invested:
Founding Date: November 2014
Founded by: Rajesh Bernard C
Bangalore-based Smarter Biz Technologies Private Ltd, provides customer centric business automation solution on mobile. It captures all the digital activity of a business process and then provides mobile based automation solutions for the end customers.
Founding Date: September 2013
Founded by: Gautam Garg, Swapnil Jain, Mukesh Gupta
Scanova is a product of New Delhi-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Trycon Technologies. It helps in creating, designing and managing QR Codes for promotional campaigns.
Rapport
Founding Date: March 2015
Founded by: Shabareesh Deepak, Yogendra Sharma.
Rapport is a product of Pune-based Stratawiz Technologies at private beta stage scheduled to be launched in September this year. Rapport offers a native mobile app and a cloud-based backend portal that helps its clients ensure better communication and collaboration between sales force and management.
According to P Rama Krishna, general partner at Utthishta Yekum Fund, “The fund typically picks up between 10% and 15% stake in very early-stage startups in exchange of its investments. It holds on to them for at least five years for an exit, and expects 18-19% return on investment from the firms.”
Utthishta Yekum Fund is also a partner to Nasscom 10,000 Startup initiative, Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels and Calcutta Angels . Till date it has invested in seven startups including adventure travel company, GreatWideOpen; customer grievance portal, Claimback and Happyweddings.com.
