Venture capital and growth-equity investment firm Elevation Capital(formerly SAIF Partners) has raised $670 million (Rs 5,080 crore) for its fifth India-focussed vehicle.
“Elevation’s Fund VIII is one of the largest India-focused venture platforms to date, enabling us to continue being a pivotal catalyst for Indian founders to fulfill their aspirations. Fund VIII will allow us to demonstrate a greater commitment to exceptional founders with a larger initial investment and continued support to them until much later in their journeys,” the firm said in a statement.
The new vehicle just like its predecessors would continue to focus on the Seed and Series A stage.
“Early-stage investing is where we have found our ikigai — the perfect intersection of our capabilities, passion, and the needs of the founder ecosystem. As a result, our investment pace has been accelerating and went up by 100%, just in the past 12 months,” the statement said.
The VC firm typically chases investments in sectors such as consumer products and services, technology, media, education, telecom, financial services, healthcare, travel and tourism, and manufacturing. It typically invests between $2 million and $75 million in one or more rounds in its portfolio companies.
Elevation Capital is particularly bullish on the potential of the country’s technology ecosystem, that gave birth to a large number of unicorns in past few years. It pointed out that the ~00 unicorns in India alone have a combined valuation of $240 billion and likely to grow over 10x over the next decade to achieve $2 trillion of market cap.
“At Elevation, we have played a crucial role in nurturing the earliest of tech entrepreneurs in India. Over the past two decades, we have invested almost $2 billion of capital in over 150 companies across seven funds, with 13 early-stage investments becoming unicorns,” the statement added.
SAIF Partners got rebranded in October 2020 as Elevation Capital and also announced the final close of its 7th fund at around $400 million.
The investment firm had last raised $350 million for its third India fund in July 2017. That fund was almost the same size as its previous funds.
Elevation Capital has been investing in India since 2002 and backed some of the technology majors such as Acko, FirstCry, Makemytrip, Meesho, NoBroker, Paytm, Sharechat, Spinny, Swiggy, Unacademy, Urban Company and Xpressbees.
Recently, the firm backed document automation firm Nanonets, decentralised finance (DeFi) startup Pillow, compliance automation startup Sprinto and buy now pay later (BNPL) platform Mintifi.
Last year, several early-stage VC firms announced fundraising milestones. Chiratae Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and WaterBridge Ventures announced the final close of their new funds and Blume Ventures announced the first close.
The fundraising momentum is continuing in 2022 as well. Earlier this week, VCCircle reported that early-stage consumer focussed venture capital fund Fireside Ventures has hit the market to mop up a much larger corpus for its third fund In March, Mumbai-based venture capital firm Equanimity Investments launched its second fund that has a target corpus of ₹350 crore (around $45.5 million) and a greenshoe option to raise an equal amount.
Prior to that, Accel India, an early backer of startups such as Flipkart and Freshworks, raised $650 million in commitments for its seventh fund to invest in new opportunities like emerging tech across India and Southeast Asia. In February, early-stage venture capital firm Prime Venture Partners marked the final close of its fourth fund at $120 million.