3one4 Capital launches $100 Mn fund for early-stage startups

Early-stage venture capital firm 3one4 Capital has marked the first close of its third venture capital fund, which has a target corpus of $100 million. This is the third early-stage fund and the overall fifth fund launched by the Bengaluru-based VC firm.

According to 3one4 Capital, it has already received 40% of the targeted corpus ($100 million) from new and existing backers and is aiming to raise the rest from family offices, endowments, foundations, and financial institutional investors, among others. 

The latest Fund-III would be deployed towards building the portfolio of around 25-30 early-stage startups especially working in segments such as SaaS and enterprise automation, direct-to-consumer, media & content, fintech, and deep technology. Within these themes, the fund will also place bets in tech-enabled companies in health, education, mobility and agriculture domains.

3one4 Capital's first fund was closed at Rs 100 crore while the second fund made final close at Rs 250 crore.

3one4 Capital would invest anywhere between $500K to $4 million and would support the portfolio with follow-on investments at later stages. 

“Our deep involvement model is designed to help founders optimize for sustainable growth by serving as a force multiplier on the path towards defensible long-term value creation,” said Siddarth Pai, managing partner at 3one4 Capital.

With a combined asset under management of Rs 1,550 crore across all funds, 3one4 Capital has a portfolio of over 50 investments across the above-mentioned sectors. It has invested in companies like Mitron, Licious, Open, LoanTap, Uable, Betterplace, DarwinBox, Faircent, Bugworks, Pocket Aces, YourStory and Tracxn.

Floated in 2016 by Siddharth and Pranav Pai, 3one4 Capital had also made the final close of its two funds -- Rising I and Continuum I -- in December, last year. The seed focused fund Rising had a corpus of $6.5 million whereas growth-stage focused Continuum was worth $56 million.

Strong headwinds buffeting the Indian economy has not dampened the enthusiasm of VCs, especially the early-stage focused, as they continue to close and launch new funds believing in the promise that startups offer in such tough situations. AngelList India, BEENEXT, Lightspeed, Sequoia and Venture Catalysts’ 9Unicorn and a few others have closed their early-stage focused funds this year.