Venture Highway raises $78.6M for its second fund, to focus on seed investments in India

Early-stage venture capital firm, Venture Highway on Thursday said that it raised $78.6 million for its second fund focussed on technology seed investments in India.

Venture Highway said that a large part of the current fund will be used to invest in about 30 new early-stage startups. It added that the average cheque size for its second fund is expected to be $1 million.

Founded in 2015, the Mauritius-based investment firm, to date, has invested in more than 20 startups, including early investments in Tracxn, Cars24, and Wishfin.    

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Additionally, through its first fund, Venture Highway has also invested in disruptive companies including – Facebook’s first investment in India, Meesho; Twitter-backed vernacular social network, ShareChat; Tiger Global and Accel-backed ecommerce platform, Moglix; among others.

Speaking on the new fund, Samir Sood, Founder, Venture Highway LLP, said,

“We are extremely passionate about helping advise technology entrepreneurs build their businesses with our local and global networks. Our goal is to give back to our country’s early-stage ecosystem, and we continue to be extremely excited about the quality of the current generation of entrepreneurs building large businesses out of India.”  

When asked about the potential sectors in which the VC firm is looking to invest in with its second fund, Samir said,

“We do not look at the investment world in sectors. We do early-stage seed technology investing and bet on great founders, where our local and global networks can help the entrepreneurs.”

From the second fund, Venture Highway has already made eight investments including OkCredit, Mobile Premier League (MPL), O4S, WMall, Cityfurnish, MyScoot, Marsplay, and MyPetrolPump.

Currently, the VC firm calls itself a founder-focussed seed fund, and partners with the next generation of Indian technology entrepreneurs, by providing guidance and early rounds of institutional capital.

Backed by investors from the Silicon Valley, the firm was started by former Google Executive Samir Sood and former Global Business Head at WhatsApp, Neeraj Arora, who were friends at Google. 

Having worked with global firms such as Google, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, Samir’s professional journey spans across roles in building a family business in India, making early-stage technology investments, and leading mergers and acquisitions globally and in Asia.

(Edited by Suman Singh)

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