Theia Ventures announces first close of $30M fund with BII as anchor investor
The specialist venture capital firm will look to back between 18 to 20 early-stage startups that are developing technology to decarbonise critical sectors such as heavy industries, manufacturing, mobility, and supply chain.
Early-stage VC firm, Theia Ventures, on Wednesday announced the first close of its maiden fund with British International Investment (BII) coming in as the anchor investor. With the first close, the firm has secured commitments for over 50% of its $30 million target corpus to back early-stage startups.
The fund’s investor base also includes a mix of international institutional investors, including Germany-based Allocator One, US-based Cisco Foundation, and Australia-based Vitality Capital Partners. It is also backed by the family offices of Anand Mahindra, Thermax Group’s Meher Pudumjee, JM Financial, Vimson: Shivanand Salgaocar Group, and Pramit Jhaveri, the former CEO of Citibank India.
The firm is looking to back 18 to 20 startups that are developing differentiated technologies that work to decarbonise critical sectors such as heavy industries, manufacturing, material science, mobility, and supply chain. Theia Ventures’ average ticket size will be between $500,000 to $1 million.
Over 50% of the new fund will be reserved to make follow-on investments in portfolio companies. In an interview with YourStory, Priya Shah, founder and managing partner at Theia Ventures, spoke about the reasons behind this allocation, adding that deep-tech companies need capital to build their IP, after which they will be able to grow and scale.
Moreover, “they will need us to sort of take positions in future rounds so that we can play an active role in the company, beyond Series A. So the ability for us is to be able to kind of come in with a significant sort of stake as an investor, and then be able to retain that stake to continue to provide that guidance as a sector expert and a sort of industry expert in the places that they're working in and help them to attract that follow-on capital, is important to us,” she added.
The firm joins a growing number of VCs that are looking to earmark a significant portion of their funds to provide additional capital support to winners from their portfolio.
Theia Ventures has already begun dispersing from the new fund with recent investments in Accel-backed electric air taxi company, Sarla Aviation, and Climitra Carbon—a biocoal company that caters to the steel industry.
Shah added that the firm has also signed on two additional companies in precision fermentation and AI-based energy data modelling. However, the firm did not disclose the names of these companies as it is wrapping up final procedures.
Theia Ventures has previously backed companies like AltM Bio, Exponent Energy, and Metastable Materials, among others, using proprietary capital.
The final close of the fund is expected by the end of the current financial year, and further investments will be announced early next year.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan