World Bank’s Investment Arm Backs Endiya Partners’ Fund II

World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) has committed to invest $10 Mn (nearly INR 75 Cr) in Hyderabad-based early-stage venture capital firm Endiya Partners’ Fund II. Along with this, IFC has also committed an additional $10 Mn for direct co-investments alongside Endiya Fund II.

The partnership with IFC will provide Endiya’s portfolio companies with financial and strategic support resulting in increased access to growth opportunities and sustainable scalability, the homegrown investment firm has claimed.

“Early-stage venture capital (VC) investment volumes in India are markedly lower than VC volumes in countries like the US and China. Our investment in VC funds like Endiya helps mobilise capital from other LPs (limited partners) and brings that capital to path-breaking early-stage businesses… Endiya Partners has demonstrated differentiation in access to high-quality Pre-Series A opportunities in enterprise technology and healthtech sectors” said Jun Zhang, IFC country head, India.

Prior to this, IFC has invested $20 Mn in early-stage venture fund Chiratae Ventures, formerly known as IDG Ventures, in 2019 and 2017. Besides this, it has also invested another $20 Mn in Jungle Ventures in 2015. In 2017, IFO has also invested in Stellaris Venture Partners and Pi Ventures to boost the investment in Indian startups.

According to DataLabs by Inc42’s Indian Tech Startup Funding Report 2019, the Indian startups have raised $58 Bn between 2014 to 2019, whereas the total count of funding deals crossed the 5K mark with 5,011 investments. In 2019, the total funding raised by tech startups in India across 766 deals was $12.7 Bn, which is a 15% increase from 2018.

But 2020 has been a bad year for Indian startups due to the pandemic and the resultant restrictions. The investment in the startups have fallen across the charts. The total funding raised by Indian startups saw a massive dip between March and April 2020. The total capital inflow plunged by a whopping 55% from $1.05 Bn in March to just $474 Mn in April and $222 Mn in May.

Endiya Partners is a B2B-focused early-stage investment firm that has made investments across healthcare, enterprise technology solutions and consumer services sectors. The company’s portfolio includes deeptech startup Myelin Foundry, health and fitness startup Cure.fit, healthtech startup ekincare and cloud kitchen Innerchef, among others.

It has launched two funds till date. It had announced the final close of its debut Fund I at INR 175 Cr in early 2017. The first close of the Fund I was announced in 2016 at INR 100 Cr. Currently, Endiya Partners is working on its INR 500 Cr Fund II, which had announced its first close in May last year at INR 303 Cr ($40 Mn).

The early-stage VC firm usually invests between $500K to $1.5 Mn in Seed or Pre Series A funding rounds, but with the new fund it may invest up to $5 Mn per startup. Endiya team includes Sateesh Andra, Ramesh Byrapaneni, Abhishek Srivastava and Abhiram Katta along with Lakshmi Kancharla and Dipesh Chawla.