Veda VC marks first close of $30 Mn fund

Early-stage venture capital fund Veda VC has announced the first close of its Rs 250 crore or $30 million corpus led by family offices and startup CXOs.

The SEBI-registered Category 1 AIF fund plans to invest between $250,000 and $1.25 million in technology and tech-enabled ventures in India across consumer internet, SaaS, fintech and deep tech sectors.  Its focus is on early-stage investments (from seed to pre-Series A stages).

Founded by Vasant Rao and Ashis Nayak, Avijeet Alagathi (BYG), and Venus Dhuria (Appyhigh), Veda has a dedicated team for investments in frontier technologies such as  AI/ML, computer vision, and space tech. Besides capital, the team brings domain knowledge, ecosystem network, execution skills and craft to help portfolio companies reach PMF, scale faster and raise follow-on capital.

Veda has so far invested in 46 startups, more than half of whom have raised subsequent capital from marquee investors like Sequoia, Accel, Kalaari Capital, Mayfair, 3one4 Capital, and more. The fund’s portfolio includes Dukaan, Elo Elo, One Impression, Even Health, Rigi, Growth School, and Agnikul among others.

Earlier this month, early stage venture fund pi Ventures announced the final close of its second fund with a total commitment of $85 million. The fund focuses on startups in the field of AI and deeptech categories across sectors such as spacetech, biotech, blockchain, and material science.