Sequoia Capital to raise $1 Bn India-focused fund

Sequoia Capital is planning to raise up to $1 billion which it will invest in Indian startups. This will be the sixth India-focused fund and will also be the largest corpus raised for the domestic market.

The new fund comes after two years when it last raised $930 million for its India-focused fund.

The Economic Times reported the development through sources. The venture capital firm allocates investments across technology companies, consumer and other non-tech investments.   

The VC firm, which manages about $3.2 billion of investments, has some well-known firms such as Zomato, Just Dial, Grofers and Byju’s, among others as its investees.

Last year, the firm invested about $183 million across 23 deals in India, mainly in the technology, consumer and healthcare sectors, according to data research platform Venture Intelligence. Its investments in the domestic-consumer market include snacks maker Prataap, which was listed on the stock exchanges last year, and Fogg deodorant maker Vini Cosmetics.

The venture capital firm also plans to invest in Southeast Asia-based startups from the new fund. The SouthEast Asian region will be a significant part of the strategy in the upcoming fund for Sequoia Capital India, according to the report.

Besides, the firm has also seen some of the biggest successes in Southeast Asia where it made early investments in companies like Go-Jek, a bike taxi firm which was valued at more than $3 billion recently, Tokopedia, Traveloka and sports brand One Championship, among others.

Sequoia Capital is raising the new India-focused fund after the rising investment surge from Chinese and Japanese investors in the Indian technology market.

Funds launched in 2017

Over the past 12 months, several new venture capital firms have made debut in India.

Early this year, ex Helion Venture Partners key executives Rahul Chaudhry, Alok Goyal and Ritesh Banglani floated Stellaris Venture to invest in early-stage startups.

Rahul Chandra, managing director at Helion Venture Partners also launched a new investment firm Unitary Helion with a corpus of $100 million.

Epiq is one of the new investments firms that made debut in Indian startup ecosystem last year.

In 2016, ex SAIF Partner’s principal Mukul Singhal and Rohit Jain had started early-stage investment firm Pravega VC with $30 million corpus to invest in early-stage startups.

In July 2017, Nandan Nilekani and Helion Venture’s Sanjeev Aggarwal launched investment fund called Fundamentum with a corpus of $100 million to back startups looking for growth capital.

Another Helion Ventures co-founder Kanwaljit Singh launched Fireside Ventures in August to invest in consumer brands across sectors, including food and beverages, personal care and home products.

Last year, the Indian startup ecosystem witnessed the launch of various funds including Stellaris and Pravega VC. In November, tech entrepreneur and billionaire from Canada, Terry Matthew in a collaboration with Indian company Ideas to Impacts launched $10 million funds for Indian startups.

Late last year, private equity firm Lighthouse Funds has raised $80 million in the first round of its third fund from existing investors.