VC firm WaterBridge raises $30 Mn in final stage of maiden round

Venture capital firm WaterBridge, an early stage investor, has raised $30 million in its final close of maiden round. With this round, the VC firm has raised a total of $35 million. It raised $5 million in the first round.

The VC firm has got the backing of government-owned SIDBI, global family offices from US, Hong Kong and Singapore, along with high net-worth professionals from the technology sector who are as its Partners also.

Led by Manish Kheterpal, Sarbvir Singh, Ravi Kaushik and Ashish Jain, WaterBridge primarily invests around Rs 3 to 4 crores in passionate entrepreneurs who are solving problems for consumers and businesses with tech as the exponential enabler.

The SEBI-registered Investment firm is targeting 15-20 investments, across segments, including, B2B analytics, social, education, healthcare government and science and technology.

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

WaterBridge has invested in many companies such as Unacademy, DataWeave, and ZipLoan, amongst others.

Numerous investment vehicles are also looking to place early-stage bets on India’s startup ventures.

Other early stage ventures such as Blume Ventures and Kalaari Capital are also on the road to raise their next investments.

Last year, Mumbai-based early stage investor Kae Capital had closed its second fund with a corpus of $53 million. Earlier, it raised its maiden $25 million fund in March 2012. Previously, it has invested in his personal capacity in companies such as Myntra, ad-tech company InMobi and data analytics firm Fractal Analytics.

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.

The story was first reported by ET