Avataar Venture Partners sets up $300 million fund to invest in B2B and SaaS startups
Avataar Venture Partners' first fund will focus on providing $10-30 million growth-stage investments to firms that have at least $15 million in annual recurring revenues and are looking to scale.
B2B and Software as a Service (SaaS) startups seeking growth capital can now look forward to a venture capital fund specially focused on this segment. Avataar Venture Partners, founded by Mohan Kumar, former partner with Norwest Venture Partners India and Nishant Rao, ex-chief operating officer, Freshworks, has announced a $300 million fund for this segment.
Avataar Venture Partners is backed by HarbourVest, a US-headquartered private equity firm with more than $64 billion in assets under management; they have come in as the Limited Partner. Avataar Venture Partners was founded in July this year.
According to Avataar, the fund will focus on making $10–30 million growth-stage investments in B2B and SaaS companies that have at least $15 million in annual recurring revenues and are looking to scale globally.
According to the founders of Avataar, this VC firm was founded on the belief that to successfully build, scale, and accelerate the growth of companies, entrepreneurs will need partners with operational action bias.
According to Mohan, they will work closely with leadership teams of the investee companies to help them scale their business.
As the first step, Avataar has acquired stakes in six B2B SaaS companies, Appnomic, Capillary, CRMNext, ElasticRun, Manthan, and Zenoti, from Norwest Venture Partners.
The founding partners of Avataar said, “With Avataar, we want to create an ecosystem of strong execution-focused partners who have built scale, have seen the story before and can bring timely learning from past successes and failures to our entrepreneurs. The fund will focus on bringing this as a key differentiator beyond capital. The partnership with HarbourVest will allow us to provide capital needed to scale our businesses.”
Tim Flower, Managing Director, HarbourVest Partners, said, “As an investor in Avataar Venture Partners I, we are delighted to be partnering with Avataar to provide the necessary resources for companies to reach their maximum potential. We look forward to working with the team as it executes its strategy of scaling these companies into global businesses.”
B2B startups and SaaS companies have strongly emerged as the key focus area for investors and a private equity giant like Tiger Global has made certain key investments in this segment in India.
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
