JSW Ventures Gets SEBI Nod To Invest $15 Mn In Early Stage Startups

JSW Ventures has received mandatory clearances from SEBI to invest $15 Mn (INR 100 crores) in early stage startups over a period of three years. The initial focus will be on technology-enabled startups operating in education, healthcare, financial services, SaaS and enterprise software space.

The fund will be overseen by Parth Jindal, son of group chairman Sajjan Jindal, and Managing Director, JSW Cement. Gaurav Sachdeva, a former executive of Brand Capital, has been appointed as Managing Partner.

As per an earlier announcement, JSW Venture Fund is eyeing a sweet spot of INR 3- 6 crore per deal, investing across seed to Series-A rounds of funding.

“Technology innovation is happening across sectors, from old-fashioned verticals like real estate to research-driven work being done in machine learning and artificial intelligence. We think that the opportunity to innovate across sectors and businesses is immense and want to be a part of this transition,” said Parth.

He further added that, “As an early-stage fund, we will not only provide capital but will remain strong partners of our investee companies as they grow, leveraging the JSW Group’s expertise and experience to help them blossom into world-class companies.”

Team, product-market fit, scalability and technology innovation will be the key criteria while assessing companies. “We typically like to lead investment rounds and work with founders helping them discover and solve business critical problems,” said Gaurav.

JSW Ventures is part of the $11 BnJSW Group with interests in steel, energy, infrastructure and cement. The cue for launching this fund came in late 2015. The fund will invest proprietary capital of the family and not as a strategic investment vehicle.