Early-stage investment firm DSG Consumer Partners has received an additional $10 million (Rs 63 crore) for its second fund, marking the final close at $50 million (Rs 319 crore), a top executive told VCCircle.
“We had a target of $40 million for the second fund and a hard cap of $50 million. We closed at the $50 million hard cap despite investor demand and had the difficult task of saying no to some investors,†said Deepak Shahdadpuri, founder, DSG Consumer Partners.
The second fund, DSGCP II, received commitments from a number of institutional investors, family offices, and fund of funds with most of the investors from the first fund investing again, he said. Two-thirds of the second fund came from new investors, he added.
The VC firm is also raising a new fund – DSGCP Tyeb – to invest in "best companies" from its first fund.
"This allows limited partners not in Fund I to gain exposure to tomorrow's leading consumer brands," said Shahdadpuri. DSGCP Tyeb is targeting a corpus of $20 million and it has already made a first close of $16 million last week, he said.
The second fund, which made the first close in April last year, has already made commitments of around $13 million.
The VC firm's investments from the second fund include cold-pressed juice manufacturer Raw Pressery, art venture Insignia Art Collect Pvt Ltd, and tech-enabled motorbike rental startup Tazzo Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Mint newspaper first reported about the development.
The second fund aims to make 20 investments and will focus on companies in India and Southeast Asia. The VC firm will deploy the entire corpus by mid-2018, Shahdadpuri told Mint early this year.
DSG Consumer Partners' first fund raised $12 million and made 21 investments starting in 2013, Shahdadpuri said.
At that time, it had also raised DSGCP Souza, a $10 million co-investment fund. Its investments from the first fund include mobile payments service provider Mswipe Technologies, specialty food ingredients maker Veeba Foods, restaurant reservations and rating platform Eazydiner, personal coaching firm GOQii, frozen dry fruit and vegetable firm Saraf Food, and specialty cheese maker Exito Gourmet.
Shahdadpuri said that the VC firm has made two full and two partial exits releasing $11 million and has written off three investments. "Fund I has returned $6 million to investors. All this in just over four years," he added.
The early-stage investment space in India has seen several fund-launching activities in the recent past.
Earlier this year, IDG Ventures, Endiya Partners, Stellaris Venture Partners and Fireside Ventures, Menterra Venture Advisors and WEH Ventures had either made the first or final close of their funds.
