Japan Vyas, former managing partner at Sixth Sense Ventures, has started alternative asset management firm Roots Ventures that is raising its debut fund to invest in companies across stages and sectors, a person familiar with the development told VCCirlce.
Vyas had left Sixth Sense Ventures earlier this year, the person said without disclosing details.
An email sent to Vyas seeking comment on the fund's investment strategy did not elicit a response till the time of filing this article.
Earlier on Friday, the Mint cited Vyas as saying that the fund, which is registered with the Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI), has a target corpus of Rs 300 crore.
Roots Ventures has been formed in partnership with Ravinder Vashist. Vyas and Vashist had worked together at IDFC Investment Advisors Ltd earlier and so had Sixth Sense founder Nikhil Vora.
Vashist was previously working with mid-market private equity firm BanyanTree Capital as principal. VCCircle in October reported that he had stepped down.
According to the Mint report, Karanpal Singh, founder of venture capital firm Hunch Ventures, has picked up a significant minority stake in Roots Ventures.
A bulk of the investment from Root Ventures' fund will go towards growth stage private companies. It will also make pre-IPO deals and invest in listed small and mid-cap companies. The ticket size for these deals is likely to be Rs 10-30 crore, the report said.
Early-stage deals will constitute a small part of the fund with a ticket size of Rs 4-5 crore. The fund is sector-agnostic and will look to invest in consumer and technology segments, among others, the report said.
VC funds
A bunch of seed and venture capital funds have been launched or have achieved fundraising milestones this year. They could potentially breathe new life into early-stage dealmaking, which has been sluggish over the past three years after the euphoria of 2015.
India Quotient marked the first close of raising money for its third fund at $30 million (Rs 195 crore) while Fireside Ventures marked the final close of its debut fund at Rs 340 crore (about $52 million). Prime Venture Partners closed its third fund at Rs 400 crore (about $60 million) in the first quarter.
Large VC firms such as Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Lightspeed, Lightbox and Nexus Venture Partners, which make early-stage bets, have also announced fundraising milestones this year.
Bessemer Venture Partners closed its new fund at $1.85 billion, which will continue to invest roughly 30% of the total corpus in international markets such as India and Israel.
Earlier this week, VCCircle reported that Mount Judi Ventures had received regulatory approval for its debut venture capital fund and was gearing up for its first close.
