Speciale Invest announces close of Fund III with a target corpus of Rs 600 Cr
Speciale Invest's Fund III will invest in 18 to 20 startups between 2025 and 2029 across deeptech segments, including spacetech, advanced manufacturing, energy, health, and AI.
Deeptech-focused venture capital firm Speciale Invest on Tuesday announced the close of its third fund with a target corpus of Rs 600 crore, exceeding its initial target of Rs 500 crore.
According to the early-stage VC firm, the new fund will invest in 18 to 20 startups over the next four years, following its existing focus on spacetech, advanced manufacturing, energy, health, and artificial intelligence.
The new fund is almost double the size of its Fund II, which had a target corpus of around Rs 300 crore.
“We've realised that some of these companies have a long journey and will need capital over subsequent rounds. Therefore, having a larger fund allows us to sort of put capital to work in subsequent rounds over a period of time. That enables us to support the companies that are probable to be successful over a longer period of time,” Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest, told YourStory.
Speciale Invest, which backs spacetech startup Agnikul Cosmos, will earmark 50% of the fund for follow-on investments in startups it will invest from this third fund. It will not make any crossover investments.
Rajaram clarified that the firm’s Rs 185 crore growth fund, launched in 2023, will continue to make follow-on investments in companies from Fund I and II.
Speciale Invest will write initial tickets ranging between Rs 7 crore and Rs 10 crore. Rajaram noted that the sizes of the funding rounds for these companies will be consistent. “We may own a little more than we held before. However, cheque sizes will change by 10-20%, not significant. But the round sizes will remain the same.”
The Chennai-based VC is looking for companies that fall under three themes, namely sovereign edge, global market readiness, and capital stack orchestration. Some of its portfolio startups include quantum cryptography company QNu Labs and multi-sensor satellite constellation startup GalaxEye.
Speciale Invest launched its first fund back in 2017 with a target corpus of Rs 60 crore. When asked about the returns from this fund, Rajaram said, “We've done very well for ourselves in Fund I. We've returned more than 1X of the fund back already. We started to do this in year six. So that's, of course, put us in a good place to be in terms of performance. That's also allowed us to raise funds.”
Edited by Suman Singh