Early-stage investor Ankur Capital raises Rs 330 Cr in its second fund

Early-stage venture capital firm Ankur Capital has raised Rs 330 crore ahead of an interim close of its second fund targeted at Rs 350 crore from CDC Group, Dutch Good Growth Fund, Small Industries Development Bank of India, BIRAC, MacArthur Foundation and NABARD.

According to the company, it has received commitments worth Rs 330 crore from its existing as well as new investors. The Mumbai-based firm has also kept an option to retain another Rs 50 crore depending on the interest of investors.

Ankur Capital had made the first close of its second fund at Rs 240 crore in January 2020 in which CDC was an anchor investor. The fund aims to make a final close by this June and expects to infuse it over the next 24 months.

“We have already started drawing down from our second fund and have made four new investments from it,” said Rema Subramanian, co-founder and managing partner at Ankur Capital. She added that the firm will be looking to back around 16-17 companies through the new fund.

The fund had increased its cheque size during the last close in January 2020 and now looks to invest $1-5 million in its portfolio companies.

The seven-year-old firm primarily makes investment during startups’ pre-Series A to Series A rounds across segments including agritech, food, vernacular technology, healthcare, education, retail and logistics. Captain Fresh, Vegrow, Cropin, String Bio, Health Sutra Niramai, BigHaat and Jiny are some of the notable bets of Ankur Capital since its inception by Subramanian and Ritu Verma.

Around half a dozen early-stage focused funds have closed new rounds in the past six to eight months. Back in September, 3one4 Capital had marked the first close of its third venture capital fund with a target corpus of $100 million followed by Elevation Capital which also announced the close of its seventh fund at $400 million.

Earlier this year, Mirae Asset and Fireside Ventures had launched their early-stage focused funds worth $35 million and $118 million, respectively. Last month, India Quotient had also announced the launch of its fourth fund for startups in the SaaS, social media, D2C, edtech and fintech spaces.