Porter, HealthKart power Kae Capital’s maiden fund to deliver strong returns
The firm’s Fund I India vehicle has fully exited with a distributed paid-in capital of 3.6X as of September 2023, and the fund's overseas vehicle is on track to delivery over 5X DPI.
Seed-stage venture capital firm Kae Capital on Tuesday said two of its earlier investments—logistics platform Porter and online healthcare marketplace HealthKart—have together returned the firm’s maiden fund multiple times over following a series of recent secondary transactions.
According to the company, Porter has delivered more than 2X of the fund, while HealthKart has returned 1X of the fund with significant value yet to be realised.
On how the firm goes about identifying its portfolio companies, Gaurav Chaturvedi, General Partner at Kae Capital, told YourStory that the firm looks for founders that have non-obvious insights and founder-market fit. “There has to be specific skills or motivation that the founders have and whether that team is the best rooted to build for this kind of business is what we check for. We typically take a view on the market but it's mostly driven by founders and their insights and there are a lot of times the market or the insights are non-obvious on day one.”
The firm’s maiden fund, which was launched in 2012, has backed 32 companies across India and the US. The Fund I India vehicle has fully exited with a distributed paid-in capital of 3.6X as of September 2023 while the overseas vehicle is on track to deliver to over 5X DPI.
DPI measures how much money investors have received back compared to what they originally put in. In this case, a DPI of 3.6x means investors have received 3.6 times their original investment.
Fund I has also catalysed over $900 million of follow-on capital, according to Kae Capital and has collectively created over $2.7 billion in enterprise value.
The firm, which is currently deploying capital from its third fund, will make one or two more investments from the fund. It has made 29 investments so far, some of which include recent deals in Grapevine and Quickads.
Other portfolio companies include skincare brand Foxtale and women’s wellness brand Nua, among others.
Going forward, the firm is sharpening its focus on bets in artificial intelligence, intelligent automation, manufacturing, and deep-tech. According to Chaturvedi, the companies coming up in these sectors along with favourable regulatory tailwinds are fostering a number of opportunities in these segments.
Chaturvedi also added that the firm has invested in a robotics firm but did not disclose the name of the firm as it is yet to be announced.
Edited by Megha Reddy