Aiming to capitalize on early-stage startups, Unicorn India Ventures has marked the first close of its Fund-II at Rs 90 crore.
While the Mumbai-based firm has already received the first tranche for Fund-II, it is targeting to raise a total corpus of Rs 400 crore in the next 12 months.
The latest Fund-II saw the participation by a number of family offices and investors from the firm’s maiden Rs 100 crore fund launched 5 years back, said an Economic Times report.
The firm will be looking to deploy the latest fund in around 20 startups by infusing about $1 million at their pre-Series A stage and upwards. It has already made its first bet from the latest fund, backing neo-diagnostics startup Sascan.
Incorporated by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar, Unicorn India Ventures is an early-stage technology-focused Indian registered venture fund that is known to invest in seed and early stages with initial and follow-on investments in the range of Rs 50 lakhs to Rs 10 crore.
The latest development comes at a time when the economy has taken a hit due to the ongoing global pandemic Covid-19.
So far, Unicorn India Ventures has invested in 17 startups and it has box.ai, SectorQube, Inntot, GrabonRent, SmartCoin and Finsall in its portfolio.
Earlier in July 2019, the firm had also launched its third venture capital fund worth Rs 400 crore to invest exclusively in business-to-business technology startups, including software-as-a-service, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT).
In the past six-eight months, several VC firms focusing on seed and early-stage startups in India have been raising new corpus. The list includes Accel India, Indian Angel Network (IAN), DSG Consumer Partners and 3one4 Capital, which have closed their targeted funds.
Recently, the Northern Arc Investment Manager had also marked the first close of its latest fund at $23 million.