Vertex Venture Management, the venture capital arm of the Singapore government’s investment company, Temasek, is planning to make early-stage investments in India.
The venture capital firm, which had primarily struck mid-to-growth stage deals, will now look to invest in early stage, these include series A and series B investments.
Ben Mathias, MD & India head for Vertex Ventures, who joined Vertex earlier this month from New Enterprise Associates, said that though the VC firm will invest in early stage companies, the criteria will be different for each of those.
Ben said, “Series A will be about finding a strong entrepreneur with a vision and an idea, which has the potential to make a 10X return, and will co-invest with other prominent risk capital firms. A typical Series A cheque is about $6 Mn. So, if we co-invest, it will be $3 Mn each. As with all Series A (investments), there is a high mortality. The ones that succeed will give you significant returns. Vertex’s plans will be to double down on the ones that succeed and put more capital.”
Vertex Ventures presently makes its investment in India through its South Asia fund. Vertex will invest across mobile internet, consumer mobile, enterprise and healthcare sectors.
Few of venture’s portfolio companies include online-offline baby and kids’ retailer FirstCry, online travel agency Yatra and refurbished goods retailer Greendust.
According to data from Venture Intelligence, Venture capital investments in the country had hit a new high in 2014 when there were 304 deals worth $1.2 Bn. However, that record was broken in the first nine months of the current year with 323 VC investments worth an estimated $1.4 Bn.
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