First Cheque partially exits GIVA with 75-fold return

Early-stage venture capital First Cheque has taken a partial exit from its portfolio company GIVA, a silver and gold jewellery brand. Bengaluru-based GIVA recently raised $33 million in a Series B round led by Premji Invest.

According to First Cheque, the exit took place nearly four years after its initial investment and it received 75X of the initial investment amount, giving an internal rate of return (IRR) of 194%. First Cheque was the first institutional investor of the company, it said in a statement.

While the company didn’t disclose details of its exit, First Cheque typically invests $100,000 in startups and a 75-fold return would roughly translate into $7.5 million. It’s worth noting that this is just a guesstimate and the quantum of exit amount could vary.

Four-years-old, GIVA provides a range of certified and curated offerings in silver jewellery with a lifetime replating service and a 6-month warranty. The company has raised more than $50 million in equity funding so far from investors like Premji Invest, A91 Partners, India Quotient, Sixth Sense Ventures and Aditya Birla Ventures.

While GIVA is yet to file its audited financial statements for FY23, the company projects over two-fold growth in its revenue to Rs 170 crore in FY23. According to TheKredible, its revenue stood at Rs 84.6 crore during FY22.

GIVA’s early backer Kunal Shah also took partial exit just after its Series B round.

Launched in 2019, First Cheque invests in pre-seed and seed-stage startups and has made more than 130 investments to date. Some other portfolio companies include Fashinza, WintWealth, Rigi, Rocketlane, FleetX and GlobalFair.

First Cheque also launched its Fund II in July last year and claims to back over 30 startups from the second fund in sectors like B2B marketplaces, consumer internet, fintech and SaaS. With the new fund, the investor also has extended its investment ticket size and it may lead rounds up to $800K.

Over the past few months, a bunch of startups and late-stage companies have seen partial exits of early backers.  Three family investment offices acquired stake from FirstCry’s largest stakeholder SoftBank. Titan Capital also took partial exit from debt recovery and legal automation platform Credgenics with more than 100-fold return.

Another early stage investment firm Venture Catalysts partially exited from skilling platform Cusmat with 4.2x return within three years. In April, Elevation Capital sold a $40 million worth stake in XpressBees to Khazanah Nasional Berhad.