VentureSoul Capital, a venture debt firm floated by former executives of multinational bank HSBC, Monday said it has launched its maiden fund as it looks to invest across sectors in the new economy space.
The SEBI registered category II alternative investment fund (AIF) has a target corpus of $71 million (Rs 600 crore).
The firm said they have onboarded healthcare major Micro Labs as anchor investor for the fund, which has also received commitments from individuals including E Madhusudan, the founder of Kreditbee, Glen Appliances Ltd, PSN group, Abhishek Khemka from Baazar Kolkata, Ponnuswami M of the Pure Chemicals group.
In terms of its investment thesis, the fund will invest in companies that are at Series A or beyond stage, with a demonstrated revenue model.
The fund, which was started by Anurag Tripathi, Ashish Gala and Kunal Wadhwa, will actively look to invest in companies across fintech, business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) sectors.
The India’s venture debt ecosystem saw a jump in 2023 with nearly $1.2 billion (Rs 9,945 crore) being raised from such deals, a 50% surge from the previous year, according to a report by Stride Ventures.
In volume terms, the report highlighted that approximately 175 companies raised venture debt in 2023 across 300 rounds. Additionally, the venture debt deal space in India demonstrated a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 34% since 2017.
