Knowlarity founder launches $50 Mn worth SaaS-focused fund

Venture capital and private equity firm, Basic Vectors has launched a $50 million worth technology and private equity fund which would mainly focus on software companies.

Headquartered in New York with offices operational in India, Silicon Valley, and Ukraine, Basic Vectors’ new fund would be mainly investing in B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) based companies. 

Cianna Capital, one of the partners of the Basic Vectors, is the lead investor in the newly launched fund. The other key limited partners of the fund are UHNW family offices of Rajesh Jain, founder of Netcore, and Tracxn’s co-founder Abhishek Goel.

Founded in 2019 by Ambarish Gupta and Upmanyu Misra, Basic Vectors claims to accelerate growth and make investments in lower-mid market vertical SaaS companies and help them build a sustained and long term business. 

Gupta is the founder of cloud telephony company Knowlarity Communications and had led the company for around 9 years before starting Basic Vectors. 

Basic Vectors has claimed to have invested in around 15 companies including e-commerce enabler EasyEcom, full-stack cognitive cloud platform Relecura, crypto lending startup Celsius, and online background screening company- HelloVerify. 

The close of the first fund by Basic Vectors is a good sign for the SaaS ecosystem in India. While the funding in consumer internet companies is slated to plunge, investors are expected to turn towards software product companies.

Over the past year, Saas-based startups have managed to raise a significant amount of capital including large rounds. Icertis had turned into a unicorn after scoring $115 million in June 2019, Apponomic, Carestack, Urbanpiper, and Greytip had also raised over $60 million funds collectively last year. 

According to the 2020 edition of Bain & Company’s India Private Equity report, the Indian Saas market is expected to grow around 50% annually to over $20 billion in 2022 as compared to about $6 billion in 2019. 

Recently, AngelList India’s head Utsav Somani had also launched a micro venture capital fund of corpus $5 million, largely targeting companies in software as a service and technology.