Mirae Asset launches $35 Mn worth early stage-focused fund for Indian startups

Mirae Asset, which has backed Indian startups and unicorns like Swiggy, Zomtao, Ola, Shadowfax ZoloStay and BigBasket, is now launching an early-stage focused fund for startups in the country.

According to an ET report, South Korean financial services company Mirae Asset group via Mirae Asset Venture Opportunities Fund 1, has created a corpus of $35 million to back startups from their seed to Series A stage. It has kept an option to swell the fund size to $75 million. 

It’s worth noting that Mirae Asset manages $1.5 billion across its four funds -- Mirae Asset Naver Asia Growth Fund, Mirae Asset Naver I, Mirae Asset GS Retail, Mirae Asset Celltrion for venture investments in South Korea, India and China.

In India, the firm has deployed over $200 million in half a dozen companies.

Ashish Dave, the CEO of $1 billion worth Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, will also lead the new fund in India. According to Dave, the fund will invest in early-stage startups while the growth-stage or beyond $10 million bets will be made through its global corpus. 

The new fund will target fintech, consumer internet and SaaS startups in India with $1-5 million investment over the next 12-18 months. Dave further said that some funds and partners in Korea will also participate in the upcoming funding rounds in the range of $2-4 million. 

Strong headwinds buffeting the Indian economy during the Covid-19 pandemic had not dampened VC investments last year, especially in the early-stage space. While Sequoia Capital India had backed 32 startups during their seed and Series A round, Venture Catalysts’ 9Unicorns invested in 32 startups in its first year of launch. To ramp up their domination among early-stage startups investment, AngelList India, BEENEXT and Lightspeed had also closed their funds in 2020.