Early stage Indian VC firm Kae Capital closes $53Mn in second round

Mumbai-based early stage investor Kae Capital has closed its second fund with a corpus of $53 million, exceeding the initial target of $40 million.

The VC firm got the backing of some of the country's top entrepreneurs and global Fortune 500 companies like SIDBI, Japan's Tekton Ventures and Axis Capital in the latest round.

MakeMyTrip's Deep Kalra, BookMyShow's Ashish Hemrajani, Quikr's Pranay Chulet, Hero's Sunil Munjal, Genesis Colors' Sanjay Kapoor and Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan have also participated in the round, reports Deal Street Asia.

"It has exceeded (our initial target) but we’re happy to take that money. We had earlier planned to draw the line at $50 million, but we got a lot of interest, so we finally closed it at $53 million," said Kae Capital founder and MD, Sasha Mirchandani.

He further added, “We are looking at three types of companies — B2C technology, B2B tech, either within India or globally, and the last bucket is B2C non-tech."

Kae Capital had raised its maiden $25 million fund in March 2012. Investors in the first fund included venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners and Omidyar Network; global fund-of-funds Axiom, Squadron Capital and Morgan Creek Capital Management; and a few HNIs like Manish Kejriwal, Managing Partner at Kedaara Capital.

Earlier, Mirchandani had invested in his personal capacity in companies such as Myntra, ad-tech company InMobi and data analytics firm Fractal Analytics.

The firm will continue to focus on seed stage deals, making 7-8 investments every year of $700,000-800,000. The larger fund allows it to take total investments in a startup to up to $5 million across series-A and series-B.

Of late, Kae capital has invested in Touchkin, fintech Trupay, Bengaluru-based gaming startup Hypernova Interactive, and Mumbai-based online lending startup LoanTap, including several others.

According to a report by Venture Intelligence, venture capital in India plunged to a three-year low in the second quarter of 2017. VC investments slid to 78 deals worth $275 million during the three months ended June 2017, which is 25 per cent lower compared to the same period in 2016. VC activity in Q2 2017 was also 7 per cent lower than the previous quarter, which recorded 84 deals worth $349 million.

Kae Capital: Website