Bessemer Venture Partners raises $1.6B for new global fund

By Bhawna Gupta

  • 20 Feb 2015

Global venture capital and growth capital investor Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has raised $1.6 billion for its ninth fund BVP IX, the company said in a blog.

The firm will focus on its current sectors along with exploring new areas of opportunity.

BVP invests across sectors like consumer, internet, enterprise technology, mobile, cyber security, cloud computing and SaaS developer platforms & developer infrastructure, healthcare and IT. It seeks to invest at all the stages from seed to VC funding.

An email query sent to Vishal Gupta, managing director at BVP India, for more information on country allocation and investment strategy, did not elicit any response till the time of filing this article.

Last year, BVP invested in nine Indian companies including follow-on-investments in existing portfolio firms, according to the VCCedge, a research platform of VCCircle. These companies include Home Interior Designs E-Commerce Pvt Ltd (home furnishing products' seller under brand Livspace), Serendipity Infolabs Pvt Ltd (car rental services venture TaxiForSure), Snapdeal, Remedinet Technologies Pvt Ltd (healthcare information provider), Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt Ltd (mobile & digital internet company) among others.

Recently the VC firm made a multi-bagger part-exit from its around six-year-old investment in public-listed Shriram City Union Finance by selling a small stake in the company.

It has invested in around 213 companies to date and made 18 exists through IPOs and 54 via M&A route.

Last year, BVP shut down its Mumbai office as its move to move away from investing in the infrastructure sector, which was key to its India portfolio in the past. It has been lately focused on IT, healthcare and financial services space.

Globally, BVP has done early-stage investments in Twilio, Pinterest, Yelp, Skype and Shopify to growth rounds for LinkedIn and Box.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)