VC firm Artha Venture Fund announces final close of Rs 220 Cr debut fund

Artha Venture Fund (AVF), a Mumbai-based early-stage micro-VC fund, announced the final close of its debut fund at Rs 220 crore. 

In a statement, AVF said, 50+ limited partners (LPs) participated in the fund, with almost half of the LPs increasing their investment commitments in the last three months. More than 50 percent of the investments came from family offices, and from over 20 listed companies participating directly or through promoter entities. NRIs, HNIs, super angels, and SIDBI invested the remaining capital.

The fund has allocated over 65 percent of its corpus for follow-on rounds and will make 10-12 seed+ investments per year, the statement added.

Anirudh A Damani, Managing Partner, Artha Venture Fund, said, "Besides exceeding our targeted raise two months ahead of schedule, almost 50 percent of our first cohort of LPs doubled down on their earlier investments. Many referred us to people in their network."

"I welcome each LP to our investor family. Their reinvestment and promotion of our fund within their network is a clear indicator that our fund strategy and structure resonates with them at a deeper level," he added.

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"The real credit of closing this fund goes to our founders and my fantastic team. The effect of the two pandemic-led lockdowns shook our portfolio founders and our team. However, each one stuck to their task, and our founders responded to each obstacle as an opportunity. As a result, our portfolio-wide revenues grew 3x in 12 months without raising additional capital."

"We will continue to scout for seed+ stage deals in our preferred investment themes of D2C, D2C enablers, and B2B. Another sleeping giant that has piqued our interest in the last 12 months is the gaming sector, especially for the masses," he added. 

AVF had previously announced the second close of Rs 100 crore of the said fund in June 2019. It claims to have invested more than 25 percent of the total corpus in category-winning startups such as Agnikul, LenDenClub, Kabbadi Adda, HobSpace, PiggyRide, Daalchini, and others. 

The fund recently reinvested in Agnikul's Series A round and has six deals set in the pipeline for the next few months. AVF has been broadening investment opportunities by engaging with various accelerators across the country and cumulatively (through associations and directly) plans to support 40 accelerator stage investments through small cheques written from this fund. 

Since its inception in late 2018, AVF, led by Anirudh A Damani, a second-generation investor, is part of Artha Group with investments in 85+ startups across India, the US, and Israel like OYO Rooms, Purplle, Tala, Coutloot, Karza Technologies, Mobilewalla, Interstellar, and more.