Roots Ventures readies to raise Rs 300 Cr; Paytm founder joins as backer

Growth stage focused alternative asset management VC firm Roots Ventures is raising  Rs 200 crores worth maiden fund with a greenshoe option of additional Rs 100 crores. Floated in last year, the fund follows hybrid model - a mix of private equity and venture investing.

With this fund, Roots Ventures would largely invest growth capital in private equity and pre-IPO kind of deals. It would also scout for early-stage deals but fewer in number.

While growth stage investments will have a ticket size of around ₹ 10-30 crore, Roots Venture will issue cheques worth Rs 4-5 crore to early-stage companies. The fund has roped in family houses and HNIs for the first fund.

Roots Ventures has already onboarded Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Pravin Gandhi, Sandeep Kohli, Kushal, and Chaitanya Desai and several others as backers. Anchor investors along with partners have contributed 20 percent to the target corpus, reveals a press statement from Roots Ventures.

Founded by Japan Vyas, former managing partner Sixth Sense Ventures and Ravinder Vashisht - Roots Venture already had placed six bets in genres such as fintech, consumer tech. It’s in the process of closing two more investments in mobility and consumer sectors. Three months ago, it invested in TeaMonk.

Vyas and Vashisht together worked at IDFC Investment Advisors as fund managers. Vyas is also an investor in Paytm’s mother entity - One97 Communications. He invested in the Noida-based firm in 2010.

This is the second VC firm announced this month. Myntra’s co-founder Raveen Sastry, Bhushan Patil (ex-President and Paytm), and Sanjay Ramakrishnan (ex-GM at GE and former Sr. Director at Flipkart) joined hands for $50 million fund.

The fund already got a commitment for investments from Mukesh Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, and David A Steinberg. Besides, the duo more India focused Chinese VCs along with some local ones are also set to be announced soon.