Temasek Holdings-backed InnoVen Capital has marked the first close of its debut venture debt fund at Rs 740 crore, the company said on Thursday.
The venture debt provider, which has so far been lending capital to startups through a non bank finance company, has launched a Category II SEBI registered Alternative Investment Fund Innoven Capital India Fund, the company said.
The fund has a target corpus of Rs 1000 crore with a green shoe option to raise an additional Rs 1000 crore.
The first close was done with parent InnoVen Capital Pte Ltd putting in money into the fund.
InnoVen Capital Pte is a joint venture between Seviora (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek) and United Overseas Bank.
The fund will be sector agnostic but will lend to startups primarily in consumer Internet, B2B commerce, enterprise software, fintech, health-Tech, and logistics. It will start deploying soon, it said.
Ashish Sharma, Managing Partner, said that the fund will bring on board other investors besides Innoven Capital.
So far, 17 companies backed by InnoVen Capital have achieved unicorn status.
"The new fund will help us to engage with even more start-ups,” Tarana Lalwani, Partner, said.
"With record fund raising and a vibrant IPO market, we expect a multi-fold increase in formation of new start-ups, which will lead to higher demand for venture debt in the future. Venture debt is now an integral part of financing rounds and founders have a good appreciation of the product. We have built a robust pipeline and expect to start disbursing from the fund soon," Sameer Mansukhani, Partner, said.
So far, In India, InnoVen Capital has extended debt in over 250 transactions with more than 180 start-ups. It has disbursed approximately $400 million to Indian start-ups, the company said.
Some of the startups it has lent money to include Byjus, Swiggy, Oyo Rooms, Eruditus, DailyHunt, PharmEasy, Infra.Market, Zetwerk, Moglix, FirstCry, BharatPe, boAT, Licious, Blackbuck, Rebel Foods, and Ofbusiness, the company said.