Chiratae Ventures Lines Up 10-14 Investments From Fund IV This Year

Chiratae Ventures, formerly known as IDG Ventures India, has started rolling out investments from its fourth fund and will be betting on up to 10-14 startups in the current financial year. Of this, the venture capital firm has already made investments in 8 firms so far this year.

The VC fund will be pumping in anywhere between $500,000 and $7 million in these startups in the first cheque. Broadly, it will invest in 30-40 companies from the fourth fund in a couple of years.

Fund IV which will be in the range of $200 million has already seen commitments from UK’s publicly-owned impact investor CDC Group Washington-based World Bank’s investment firm International Finance Corporation (IFC). While CDC group will be putting in $10 million in Fund IV, IFC had last year revealed that it would pump $20 million in the fund.

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Apart from focusing on core areas of technology such as consumer tech, fintech, deeptech, and healthtech, Chiratae is also scouting for opportunities in the edtech and e-gaming segments which have been provided massive tailwinds by the Covid-19 lockdown.

“There are several pockets which are unexplored or underexplored in these segments.

In the edtech space we are looking at early learning and certain types of exam preparations or job related platforms outside of IITs and medical,” said Karan Mohla, partner at Chiratae Ventures. The fund, which has stalwarts such as Ratan Tata and Kris Gopalarishnan as advisors on board, had earlier made bets on Play Shifu and Emotix, both of which have a learning and gaming at the core.

Mohla said while the online gaming segment is still at an early stage, the edtech space could see some more small consolidations in the coming months. “However, I would be surprised if there are multiple large consolidations because there's still room to grow in this segment,” he said.

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The 14-year-old VC fund invests in pre-series A to series B startups, which have technology at the core, and has about 40-45 per cent of its capital coming in from India. “Hence we are also interested in companies which are solving problems that are unique to India,” said Mohla. The homegrown VC has so far invested in over 90 startups with 34 exits till date, with some blockbuster exits including Flipkart, Lenskart and Manthan. The funds advised by Chiratae have over $750 million assets under management currently.

Chiratae recently invested in deep tech startups KBCols sciences and Aether Biomedical. “There was always a gap before deep tech start-ups could get to pre-commercialisation or commercialisation level, so that is one area we are trying to cover,” says Mohla.

*Total bets so far: 90

*Exits: 34

*Average investment size: $500,000-$7 million

*Top bets: Flipkart, Curefit, HealthifyMe, FirstCry, Lenskart

*Core focus areas: consumer tech, healthtech, fintech, deeptech