Niyo-backer Prime Venture Partners secures $100M for its latest fund
Early-stage VC firm Prime Venture Partners plans to invest $2-4 million in initial cheques, with the potential to scale up to $12 million (approximately Rs 100 crore) across 16-18 companies.
Prime Venture Partners, the domestic venture capital (VC) firm which has backed startups including Niyo, KredX, and Quiziz, has raised $100 million in its latest fund, providing a fillip to India's budding enterprises.
The early-stage VC firm plans to invest $2-4 million in initial cheques, with the potential to scale up to $12 million (approximately Rs 100 crore) across 16-18 companies, founding partner Sanjay Swamy told YourStory. It has already secured around 80% of the fund's commitments and aims to start investing in the latter half of 2025, Swamy added.
This would be Prime Venture Partners’ fifth fund and the VC firm continues to deploy from its fourth fund as well, although in follow-on rounds, he said.
“We will be continuing to invest from our fourth fund, which we raised in 2021, in companies that have done well. We stopped making new investments from the (fourth) fund in the last quarter of 2024 and now we will be backing companies that have done well, which will go on till the second quarter of this year,” Swamy told YourStory.
“For us, what matters is making a new investment and that will likely happen in the second half of 2025. We typically make five investments every year, and we will be looking at sectors like deeptech, AI, global SaaS, etc, ” he added.
Swamy said that, so far, Prime Venture Partners has received commitments from global institutional investors such as family offices, university endowments, and fund-of-funds from the US, Singapore, Europe, and the Middle East. Global institutional investors typically contribute the most to VC firms in India.
He stated that the VC firm’s first fund delivered returns of approximately 4.7X, while the second and third funds also generated "decent returns," though he did not disclose specific figures. He added that while the firm has begun returning some capital from Fund 3, he prefers not to rush exits from portfolio companies.
“Generally we are of the philosophy that early returns are a bad thing. Early returns happen when companies don’t do great and they get acquired. It’s the late returns—when companies become multi-billion dollar outcomes—what helps us or any VC move the needle,” Swamy said.
Swamy's comments come amid growing pressure on domestic VCs in India from LPs (Limited Partners or fund investors) to return capital as many VCs approach the end of their first funds' 10-year cycle.
Founded in 2012, Prime Venture Partners has backed over 50 early-stage startups, including WheelsEye, MyGate, Quizizz, PlanetSpark, Dozee, and Zuper. The VC firm highlights successful exits, such as selling Happay to Cred, Recko to Stripe, Perpule to Amazon, and Ezetap to Razorpay, along with Tracxn's public listing.
Edited by Kanishk Singh