Unicorn India Ventures Makes First Close Of Its $15 Mn Fund

Unicorn India Ventures, a SEBI registered AIF-I VC fund, started by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar has made its first close of about $6Mn of its $15 Mn (INR 40 Cr of its INR 100 Cr) fund.

The raised funds will be invested in early stage startups working in areas like social media, mobile, analytics, cloud tech and IOT.

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures said, “We are betting on sectors like fintech, app-based business helping enterprise solution, cloud technology, but a common thread among any of these startups should be that they are solving real life problems of either end users or other businesses.”

With this, Aayush Jain has been appointed as a Principal for the Unicorn India Ventures fund and will be heading Unicorn’s Delhi operations.

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, said, “We have been able to attract funding from both traditional and new investors. Interestingly, the current ratio is 50:50, but we expect new investors’ ratio to go up in the current year when we on board more investors for our further fundraise. We expect HNIs and new investors to deploy at least 5% of their total asset portfolio in startups in the country.”

Post the complete fund close, Unicorn will announce its investments in startups. It plans to invest in 10-12 startups in a year, thereby creating a portfolio of 30 companies in three years. Unicorn will have a unique modus operandi to evaluate startups before investing in them. The partners will spend close to two to three months with startup founders to understand their business model, team at work and co-founders’ working relationship among other aspects like potential of scale up, global reach of the company etc.

Unicorn India claims that it has been structured as a hybrid fund whose first investment will enable startups with a seed  round in the range of $75 K to $150 K (INR 50 lakh to INR 1 Cr). This fund would help companies build business and prepare for the next round (Series A) where the fund will also participate as a co-investor.

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