Early-stage venture capital firm Aeravti Ventures said Tuesday it has hit the first close for its maiden fund that aims to raise as much as Rs 100 crore (around $12 million).
The fund will back startups across sectors such as deep-tech, deep sciences, biosciences, agri-tech, climate and enterprise tech, the firm said in a statement. It will make investments between pre-seed and pre-Series A rounds.
Aeravti joins a bunch of early-stage VC firms and first-time fund managers raising their debut funds even as the overall startup investment environment remains muted and larger VC firms remain cautious, especially about mid- and late-stage deals that involve bigger cheques and high valuations.
This month, for instance, Physis Capital, the VC arm of angel network Inflection Point Ventures, marked the first close of its maiden fund at $7 million, while Pavestone VC said it aimed to mark the final close for its maiden fund by November with Rs 700 crore. Last month, early-stage investor Real Time Angel Fund upsized its maiden fund.
Silverneedle Ventures, SphitiCap and Callapina Capital are among the other early-stage VC firms that have floated their maiden funds over the past few months.
Aeravti didn’t specify the commitments it secured for the first close, a fundraising milestone that allows private equity and venture capital firms to start deploying capital.
The firm has already invested in two deep-tech and supply chain startups but said it would disclose the details of the investments later. Aeravti aims to deploy its capital over the next two to two-and-a-half years.
Aeravti is led by general partners Rishabh Singh and Shubham Jhuria, who are both first-time fund managers. Singh has worked with deep-tech ventures in Silicon Valley and Southern California through the incubator StartR. In India, he founded Capnetic Consulting Group, an early-stage investment banking and financial advisory firm.
Jhuria is a chartered accountant and has experience of conducting due diligence of early-stage ventures for funds and family offices. He worked in the corporate strategy team at B2B ecommerce unicorn Udaan before co-founding Capnetic with Singh.
Aeravti said it is supported by more than 25 entrepreneur partners, consisting of founders and CXOs, who will offer portfolio companies access to industry connections, strategic guidance, and technical expertise.
“We aim to support technological innovations being leveraged to build transformative businesses,” said Singh, managing partner at Aeravti. “We support businesses that create impact as an inherent function of their operations, having it baked into their business model, rather than as an externality.”
