Tiger Global rejigs India strategy: To bet on mid and growth stage startups

The Walmart-Flipkart’s worth $16 billion deal seems to have rejuvenated Tiger Global, one of the early investors in the company, which made over $3.3 billion for its billion investment in 2009.

The New York-based hedge fund seems set to establish an India-based fund to make fresh investments in the country, which it stopped three years ago. The new fund will be a part of $3 billion mega-fund called Tiger Global Private Investment Partners XI.

The fund will also invest in other geographies including US and China.

After its three years hiatus, the fund is planning to place new bets in the country. Tiger Global, which raised $2.5 billion in 2015, has only invested in portfolio companies since then.

It invested in more than 17 companies and participated in rounds which total to about $1 billion. And a majority of investments belonged to early-stage companies such as logistics firm Delhivery, home rental network Nestaway, grocery delivery platform Grofers, and tea retailer Chaayos.

However, this time, Tiger Global is expected to focus on mid- to growth-stage investments and seeking to lead funding rounds starting from $30 million.

The latest investment of the fund was RazorPay. In January this year, it invested $20 million in the digital payment solutions company Razorpay.

Tiger is planning to invest in India at a time when investments across series A, B and C have risen exponentially. According to the data platform Tracxn, the first half of 2017 had recorded about $1 billion across 140 deals across the three stages. However, the number of such deals increased to 165 that totalled $1.6 billion during the same duration this year.

The development was first reported by ET.