Venture Catalysts Launches $100 Mn Fintech Fund For Backing Growth Stage Startups

Well-known startup incubator Venture Catalysts has launched a growth capital fintech fund called Beams FinTech Fund that will invest in India-based fintech startups. It is being launched by an integrated incubator from Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns. 

The fund’s target size is $100 Mn with a greenshoe option. It plans to invest $8 Mn to $10 Mn in the Series B and C rounds of growth-stage startups led by high-quality founders and aims to build a portfolio of a dozen fintech startups that will collectively be worth more than $200 Bn by 2025. 

Beams is cofounded by Sagar Agarvwal, Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain and Gaurav Jain. Naveen Surya, chairman of the Fintech Convergence Council and founder of ItzCash (now EbixInc), has joined the fund as its fintech expert partner (non-executive), part of the core founding team. 

“Fintech is consuming an increasingly larger slice of the software pie. We are in fintech 3.0 right now in India, with the first wave of lending and payments companies having received a significant amount of capital and now the capital is moving across segments. Seasoned professionals and high-quality founders are moving out from larger firms to target newer categories to solve the long tail financial services demand in India,” said Sagar Agarvwal, cofounder at Beams. 

According to Beams, its founding team has a combined 20 years of investment experience and has contributed towards building startups such as BharatPe, Dukaan, Flobiz, Esskay, Impact Guru, Suryoday, Centrum, OTO Capital, Klub, GetVantage, LenDenClub and Junio. 

In 2021, the fintech and ecommerce sectors were neck and neck when it came to the number of venture capital deals, but when it came to the amount of funding, ecommerce came out on top with quite a margin. 

Eleven new Indian fintech unicorns were minted last year including two crypto startups that entered the club. Earlier this month, fintech giant Pine Labs began preparing for a $500 Mn initial public offering (IPO).

Earlier today,  Mumbai-based fintech startup Kissht has raised INR 100 Cr ($13.2 Mn) in a funding round led by Trifecta Capital and Northern Arc.

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