Wipro Consumer Care Ventures launches second fund with Rs 250 Cr corpus

Wipro Consumer Care Ventures, the venture funding arm of Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, on Saturday said that it has launched the second fund with a corpus of Rs 250 crore.

The Fund II will focus on investing in consumer startups in India and Southeast Asia, a company statement said.

"We would look for ecommerce driven companies at pre-Series A onwards, with minority stake approach (up to 25%), and continue with our strategy of helping and nurturing the startups as required," it added.

Wipro Consumer Care Ventures, launched around four years ago with a corpus of Rs 200 crore, has made 10 investments so far.

"The fund performance is robust with MOIC (Multiple on Invested Capital) running at over 2.2x as well as strong IRR (internal rate of return), which are above market benchmarks," it said.

Wipro Consumer Care Ventures has done part exits from two of its investments so far from the first corpus.

Moreover, "in one of them, we have clocked a 10x increase in a short period," the funding company said.

"While a large majority of this fund has been committed, a couple of more new investments would be made from this fund as well as few follow-ons too. Our portfolio construct is varied and a mix of investments in startups in India, in SE Asia, as well as in a VC fund," it said.

Wipro Consumer Care Ventures Managing Partner Sumit Keshan said the focus would be on companies, which operate in categories and sub-categories of personal care, skin care, home care, wellness, food, fragrances, BPC etc.

"Geo coverage would continue to be India and Southeast Asia where we feel we can add value beyond providing capital. We have been successful in value-adding to our investments by providing support in terms of offline focus, R&D, sourcing (specifically from overseas vendors), helping identify third-party manufacturers, finance discipline, etc," he added.

Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, a part of Azim Premji-led Wipro Enterprises, has crossed the milestone of Rs 10,000 crore in overall sales in FY23.

It operates in the FMCG and lighting business. It has also expanded into the food segment with the acquisition of Nirapara and Brahmins.