Iron Pillar closes $129M growth-stage cloud fund
The $129 million growth fund will be invested in Series B and Series C stages in Indian SaaS companies built for the world.
Mid-stage venture capital firm has announced the final close of its $129 million venture growth fund as part of the Iron Pillar Fund II series of funds. The dedicated growth fund will back global cloud software companies from India in the Series B to Series C stages.
The new fund saw participation from institutional funds across the US, Europe, and the Middle East, apart from two endowment funds and a foundation, said a statement issued by Iron Pillar. Limited Partners in the fund include Singapore-based alternative asset manager, 57 Stars LLC.
The firm currently holds nearly $500 million in Assets Under Management (AUM) and has backed companies like seafood retailer FreshToHome, jewellery brand BlueStone, skilling platform Skill-Lync, and cloud kitchen brand CureFoods, among others.
Founded in 2016 by Anand Prasanna and Mohanjit Jolly, Iron Pillar raised nearly $300 million as part of its Fund I Series. The current fund is the first of its Fund II series, with an increase in total corpus through other vehicles.
“Other funds are to be raised in coming years but [are in] early days of investor conversations. Hence, we cannot comment on the eventual size and timing right now,” Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner at Iron Pillar, told YourStory.
The global cloud fund plans on writing cheques of $8 million to $12 million across eight to 10 companies over a period of 30 months. Prasanna added that the fund will look for global SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies with an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $5 million to $10 million, building out of India. The focus areas for the fund include automation, dev tools, future work and education as well as cloud security.
“The global cloud opportunity is growing at an unprecedented pace, and we believe that Indian founders will continue to build some generational businesses in this space. We look forward to actively supporting these founders in their growth stage with this fund,” said Prasanna in a statement.
According to a Bain & Company report, Indian SaaS companies are likely to generate $12 billion in ARR for 2022.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta