Golden Sparrow Ventures raises $20M in first close of Fund II
The US-structured VC firm noted that it has received over half of the fund’s commitments and intends to back 22 companies at pre-seed and seed stage.
US-structured venture capital firm, Golden Sparrow Ventures, on Wednesday raised $20 million in the first close of its Fund II.
According to the firm, it has received commitments for over half of the fund, with 60% of its Fund I limited partners re-investing in this fund.
The firm will look to back around 22 companies at pre-seed and seed stages with an average check size of $650,000. Around 50% of the fund will be allocated for deeptech companies and 50% for Enterprise AI, with 12% of the capital reserved for follow-on investments in portfolio winners.
The fund has already made its inaugural Fund II investment in an enterprise data platform to clean and structure heavy data for large organisations. It did not disclose the name of the startup.
Golden Sparrow’s new fund will broadly look at three structural trends: globalisation of Indian deep-tech, expansion of Enterprise AI infrastructure, and deepening of the US-India talent corridor.
“A decade ago, Deep Tech was barely 1% of India's venture capital activity. Today it represents 15% of $15 billion in annual VC funding — over $2 billion flowing into the sector," noted Rishaad Currimjee, Founder and General Partner of Golden Sparrow Ventures
"We were among the first to commit real capital at this intersection. We made 10 Deep Tech investments when it was still a contrarian bet. Now the space is getting crowded — and founders should ask who actually deployed capital versus who is riding the wave,” he added.
The firm’s inaugural fund with a target corpus of $8 million was fully deployed across 18 companies between 2023 and 2025, with follow-on investments bagged from firms like Accel, TDK Ventures, and Prosus, among others.
As part of Fund I, Golden Sparrow had made a seed investment into space-tech firm EtherealX, which recently closed a $20.5 million Series A round led by TDK Ventures, BIG, Accel, and others at an $80.5 million valuation—a 5.5x markup from when the firm had invested.
Other significant portfolio companies include semiconductor firm Morphing Machine, which saw a 3X markup in valuation with its latest funding round led by IAN Alpha Fund, Enterprise AI company Hosted AI, which is raising its Series A round now, and Embodied AI startup MyoLab.
Additionally, the firm said that Ritik Singh will be joining the team as Principal. Singh was Golden Sparrow’s first hire in 2023 and will be returning after a stint at z21 Ventures. He will be leading the fund’s Bengaluru office and managing the US-India corridor sourcing.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan