The Indian Angel Network said on Thursday it has marked the final close of its maiden fund, IAN Fund, at Rs 375 crore ($53 million), surpassing the target corpus by Rs 25 crore.
The target was exceeded due to strong interest from investors across the country and overseas, IAN said in a statement.
VCCircle reported in April that the IAN Fund had already raised the targeted corpus of Rs 350 crore and it was looking to make the final close soon. The fund had the window to raise another Rs 100 crore.
The IAN Fund announced its first close at Rs 175 crore (around $27 million) in April 2017.
Institutional Limited Partners (LPs) in the fund include SIDBI’s Fund of Funds for Startups, IIFL, Wadhwani Foundation, Yes Bank, Max Group, Gray Matters Capital and Hyundai. Individual LPs include Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Hero Group's Sunil Munjal, former Google India head Rajan Anandan and Inventus Capital's Kanwal Rekhi.
The fund, which is largely sector-agnostic, focuses on healthcare and medical devices, software as a service, marketplaces, fintech, big data, artificial intelligence and hardware. It invests between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 50 crore in a startup.
The investments from the fund include air pollution control firm Chakr, waterless solar panel cleaning startup Nocca Robotics, cataloguing startup Flatpebble, local discovery and e-commerce platform Little Black Book and data analytics firm Clootrack.
Last year, the fund invested in waterless personal hygiene startup Clensta, fin-tech startup Propelld and farm-to-fork marketplace FarmersFZ.
The Indian Angel Network, which was founded in 2006, has been one of the prominent investors in India's startup ecosystem. It has over 120 portfolio companies across seven countries.
The IAN has struck some key exits including from cloud data backup firm Druva and a recent partial exit from omnichannel women’s fashion brand FabAlley. It has reportedly recorded an overall internal rate of return (IRR) of 32%.
The successful fund close of a seed and early stage fund is good news for startups in India as deal volume has fallen from the highs of the boom year of 2015 even as a bunch of domestic early-stage VC firms have emerged in the market. Still, investors argue that 2015 was a one-off year and they have become more selective in their investments now.
Earlier this year, Sequoia Capital India also marked the final close of its maiden seed fund, giving a fresh impetus to the venture capital firm's sharpened focus on discovering startups at the idea stage.
Domestic early-stage VC firms which are on the road to close their new funds include Blume Ventures, Endiya Partners and India Quotient.
