Chennai-based venture capital firm BoldCap said Wednesday it has raised $25 million (about Rs 205 crore) for its second fund to invest in early-stage business-to-business startups in the software-as-a-service domain.
BoldCap said it raised the capital from global institutions and family offices. The fund will invest in about 15 to 20 startups over the next 24-36 months, the seed-stage venture capital fund said in a statement.
“Global B2B software companies are being built out of India right now, and a lot of them are founded by product or engineering teams,” says Sathya Nellore, founder and general partner at BoldCap.
"This is why a go-to-market-focused early-stage fund, with collective knowledge and industry connections to help them scale quickly will sit perfectly within the existing VC ecosystem in India,” said Nellore, who previously co-founded a tech company WeKan.
Started in 2021, BoldCap invests in only pre-seed and seed rounds of Indian B2B SaaS startups catering to global clients. It launched its $5 million first fund in 2021. From its first fund, the company invested in 10 companies, including Spendflo, TestSigma, Spotdraft, and Locofy.
The VC firm said its portfolio companies have collectively raised over $70 million in follow-on funding over the last 12 months. These follow-on investments have come from venture capital firms such as Sequoia, Accel, Golden gate ventures, Alpha Wave, Mass Mutual Ventures, Premji, Prosus, Together, and January Capital.
“SaaS companies from India could collectively reach $50 - $70 billion in global revenues by 2030, which will be 5-7% of the global market share. We believe Indian entrepreneurs are thinking bolder and global and we are going to see a lot more SaaS companies for the world being built from India," said Nellore.
Indian SaaS firms are poised to grow at an annualized rate of 20-25% to touch an annual revenue run rate (ARR) of $35 billion by 2027 up from $12-13 billion ARR as of last year, as per a January report by Bain & Co.
India currently has an estimated 1,600 funded SaaS startups. However, only 14 of them have clocked annual recurring revenues of over $100 million in the last five years, said the report, adding that the number is likely to touch 30-40 in the next three years. The primary three key reasons that offer an edge to Indian players in the SaaS domain are product leadership, attractive pricing, and sound service quality, said the report.
