Early Stage VC Firm YourNest Launches $45 Mn Second Fund For Startups

Gurugram-based early stage venture capital firm, YourNest has launched a second fund with $45.12 Mn (INR 300 Cr) corpus. The new fund aims to increase its focus on early stage startups, and a corresponding rise in the amount of investment in each startup.

The investors’ names remain undisclosed at the moment. However, as per a Mint report, the fund has been raised from several Indian HNIs, Alternate Investment Funds and Fund-of-Funds.

YourNest plans to invest across 20-35 technology and technology-enabled startups in the next three to four years, initially beginning with about four to eight ventures this year.

This will include startups from sectors such as Internet of Things, electronic system design, artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, enterprise software, and mobile internet.

The YourNest Angel Fund was founded in 2011 by Sunil K Goyal, Sanjay Pande, and Girish Shivani. It was a SEBI-registered venture capital fund with a corpus of $14 Mn (INR 90 Cr).

The firm was planning to raise INR 300 Cr and was awaiting regulatory approval for the new fund. “The firm currently invests through its INR 90 Cr fund, of which 30% is still left to be deployed,” said Girish Shivani to ET.

To date, YourNest, with its first fund, has invested in around 16 startups which includes speech recognition company Uniphore, fintech player Rubique, discovery platform Mycity4kids, discovery app Fashalot, online marketplace for Golf enthusiast, GolfLAN, audience-centric digital engagement platform Simpli5d, taxi aggregator bookmycab, which was acquired by Jugnoo, and more.

In August last year, it also raised undisclosed investment from Northgate Capital, an investment firm specialising in fund of funds investments and direct investments. The company has also roped in Vivek Mansingh, who earlier served as President at Cisco Systems and General Partner at Dell India R&D.. In his new role with YourNest, he will co-create successful global businesses.

The development was first reported by LiveMint.