Antler announces final close of maiden fund at Rs 600 Cr
The fund is backed by several marquee investors representing six institutional and sovereign wealth investors (including SIDBI) as well as over 125 limited partners that include more than a dozen unicorn founders.
Early-stage investment platform India has said that it is approaching the final close of its maiden Rs 600 crore (~$75 million) pre-seed fund. Further, it has closed Rs 500 crore of its Rs 600 crore maiden fund, and is aiming to make the final close this quarter.
The fund is backed by several marquee investors representing six institutional and sovereign wealth investors (including SIDBI) as well as over 125 limited partners that include more than a dozen unicorn founders.
Antler has already committed to 45 India investments (in the range of $200k-$400k per investment) in SaaS, Fintech, and consumer tech, along with investments in new themes like Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC), AI from India, Climate, Web3 infrastructure, Vertical SaaS, and Spacetech.
At ~Rs 600 crore, this is one of the largest pools of venture capital dedicated to the company formation and pre-seed stage in India.
“We are extremely grateful to our early believers who have backed our vision of creating an institutional platform focused on the company formation stage, with the leverage of the world’s fastest growing early-stage network. We are equally grateful to the founders who we have partnered with," said Nitin Sharma and Rajiv Srivatsa, Co-founders and General Partners at Antler India.
"In the next 18 months, besides establishing a physical presence in additional ecosystems like Delhi NCR and Mumbai, we aim to double down on emerging themes and bring a range of capabilities for founders beyond just capital, like we have done for ONDC-Beckn with Nandan Nilekani and team. We are thrilled to be closing the greenshoe portion of the fund soon and aim to deliver exceptional returns to our LPs in the years to come via a Day Zero investing focus,” they added.
Founded in 2017, Antler is a global early-stage venture capital firm which is present in 27 locations worldwide, enabling access to a powerful network of 900+ startups.
Antler’s global advisory board includes Larry Summers (former US Treasury Secretary), David Fischer (ex-Chief Revenue Officer, Facebook), Todd Ruppert (Retired CEO, T Rowe Price) and Sheila Patel (Former Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management).
In June 2023, Antler announced the final close of its $285 million Antler Elevate fund to support growth-stage startups from Series A onwards.
Edited by Megha Reddy