Former Sequoia MD's venture A91 Partners to get $25 Mn from IFC

Venture Capital firm A91 Partners, floated by former Sequoia Capital's managing directors VT Bharadwaj, Gautam Mago and Abhay Pandey, is all set to raise around $25 million from International Finance Corporation.

The World Bank's investment arm said that the target corpus of the fund is pegged at $250-300 million.

The equity investment is committed to back 10 to 15 companies in the early growth/ late venture capital stage of development that includes consumer goods and services, healthcare, financial services and technology.

Since its inception, IFC has invested in over 400 companies in India. As of June 2018, IFC’s committed  $6 billion in its Indian portfolio companies. The firm had previously invested as an LP in Indian VC funds such as Chiratae Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and Pi Ventures.

This is decent fund raise for A91 Partners that focuses on early to growth stage private companies across consumer, healthcare, financial services, and technology sectors.

The trio had earlier announced to raise Rs 2,000 crore maiden fund to be deployed in startups via series B and series C rounds of ticket sizes ranging from $10-30 million by the first quarter of 2019.

In November, the VC firm had made its first recruitment by appointing Kaushik Anand, India head of CapitalG, as a partner.

Of late, A91 Partners along with NewQuest Capital Partners and TR Capital, is in separate talks to acquire a minority stake in ethnic beverage brand Paper Boat.