Sequoia India Closes Its Sixth Fund At $695 Mn

Sequoia India has announced the close of its sixth fund at a fund corpus of $695 Mn.

Earlier the fund size was planned to be around $1 Bn. However, Sequoia India slashed the size of its new India fund by 25%, looking at the volatile status of country’s burgeoning early-stage tech ecosystem, as reported by Inc42 in March 2018.

With its sixth fund, Sequoia India will double down its investment in early and growth stage startups. It is targeting technology, consumer and healthcare sectors across India and Southeast Asia (SEA).

“Moments like these give us an opportunity to pause, reflect, refresh and recommit to the cause. For Sequoia, the goal is clear: to be the preferred partner for daring founders who want to build legendary companies. Sequoia India has invested consistently and with conviction, every single year – in good and bad markets,” said the company in its blog post.

Sequoia India has made over 200 investments in India and SEA so far. This includes notable names such as Prataap Snacks, Zilingo, Bira, Byju’s, One Championship, Zomato, Mu Sigma, Freshworks, Druva, Freecharge, Five Star Finance, Pine Labs, Go-Jek, GlobalLogic, OYO Rooms, Practo, JustDial, and Tokopedia among others.

Several portfolio companies have had M&A events including GlobalLogic, Star Health, Scio Health Analytics, Prizm Payments, Freecharge, Citrus and others.

Multiple portfolio companies have also gone public, including Prataap Snacks, JustDial, Ujjivan, Equitas and QuickHeal.

“At Sequoia, we believe in partnering early, when the company’s DNA is just beginning to take shape. Sequoia India has been privileged to invest at the very early stages in many startups, this is another area where we intend to double down as we strive to help companies journey from idea to IPO and beyond,” the blog post added.

With this, Sequoia India also announced several changes in its leadership team:

Abheek Anand: He joined from Facebook and has led Sequoia India’s investments in Appier, Cuemath, Grofers and MoneyTap, has been promoted to Managing Director. Abheek will focus on investments in SE Asia. We have also promoted four VPs to Principal roles.

Ishaan Mittal and Sakshi Chopra: Promoted from VPs to the role of  Principals in the growth team.

Ashish Agarwal and Harshjit Sethi: Promoted from VPs to the role of  Principals in the venture team.

Abhay Pandey: He has decided to move on. Abhay had wanted to create a dedicated consumer fund. While Sequoia is committed to consumer investments, dedicated sector funds, however, are not part of Sequoia’s structure.

The plans for the new India Fund has come two years after the Silicon-based VC firm raised $930 Mn in February 2016 for its previous India-focused fund. Back then, it was identified as the biggest fundraise by any VC fund for India-specific investments. With the fundraise, the venture fund’s asset value also increased to more than $3 Bn at that time.

According to an earlier report by ET, for growth-stage investments with large ticket sizes, Sequoia might utilise its global growth fund, with a corpus of $6 Bn-$7 Bn.

Also, the SEC filings revealed that Sequoia Capital raised $4 Bn funding last year. The funds were to be deployed for infusing capital into various funds. Apart from this, the filings also revealed that the second growth fund – Sequoia Capital Global Growth Fund II, L.P. has received about $2 Bn.

A filing for Sequoia’s China Growth Fund IV, revealed that Sequoia has raised about $900 Mn to invest in startups in the Chinese market. Along with this, the filings for Sequoia Capital India reveal that the VC firm has raised about $700 Mn for the Indian market.

Apart from Sequoia, other venture capital firms operating in India include homegrown Nexus Venture Partners, Accel Partners, Blume Ventures, Matrix Partners, Kalaari Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.