Venture Catalysts’ incubator and accelerator platform 9Unicorns on Monday said it is planning investment of around Rs 400 crore in 150 startups globally in 2022, after investing about $32 million in 101 deals in 2021, a surge of around 33% from 2020 in terms of value.
The Mumbai-based accelerator fund said it has charted a funding strategy to invest in idea-stage and Series C stage rounds of startups.
The platform will be investing about $500,000 to $1 million in idea-stage startups, while $3 million in Series C funding rounds of startups or in high-growth stage startups. The fund said it has already deployed 25% of capital in high-growth startups or Series C and Series B funding rounds of startups and will look to invest in more idea-stage startups.
9Unicorns said that it had invested in 32 deals in 2020. The $100 million fund, backed by Limited Partners (LPs) claims to have witnessed over 30 up-rounds in 2021 and many global venture capitalists (VCs), family offices, unicorn founders (founders of startups with over $1 billion valuation) and top company executives have co-invested in its portfolio about 10 times. The fund invested in about 90 unique startups with a total round size of $465 million in 2021.
“While, we are aiming to become world’s largest accelerator fund with a razor-sharp focus on idea and seed stage startups, we have also started looking at Series B and C keeping in mind the new exit opportunities for startups via IPOs that India has startup witnessing lately for tech startups,” said Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, Venture Catalysts.
In 2021 the fund, launched by Sharma, Anil Jain, Anuj Golecha, and Gaurav Jain, Co-founders of Venture Catalysts, invested in 12 Series C funding rounds of startups including Vedantu, Melorra, ShipRocket, FlowBiz, Reshamandi, Biddano, BluSmart, Lido, IGP.com, Faarms, and GoQii.
The fund conducted a virtual demo day in August last year, where in about 32 of 9Unicorns’ portfolio companies raised around $108 million in two days from 50 global VCs, the company said.
9Unicorns plans another demo day in January, which will enable about 60 startups to raise funds from tier-1 VCs, the fund added.
9Unicorns said that it also promotes cross-selling strategy for startups, which enables them to clock monthly revenues of about Rs 30 crore.
The platform also conducts a corporate demo programme, called ‘C-Day,' where more than 1,000 top company executives provide business support and mentorship to startups.
