In the last six months, venture debt firm InnoVen Capital India has invested Rs 250 crore (around $37 million) in several startups. Last year it had signed venture debt transactions worth Rs 275 crore (around $41 crore) with startups in the education, healthcare, pharmaceutical and fin-tech spaces.
The firm has now made two new investments – the first in a pharmaceutical firm and the second in a fin-tech startup, Vinod Murali, managing director, InnoVen Capital India told VCCircle in a video interview. The two firms are not part of its existing portfolio, he said, but declined to reveal any further details on the investments.
The firm, which hopes to strike debt financing deals worth $60-70 million this year, is also looking at cross-border deals as a new area of opportunity.
“We’ve till now done about north of $150 million of total venture debt funding. The other thing which is developing is cross-border transactions,†Murali said.
In January 2015, Singapore government-owned investment firm Temasek had acquired SVB India Finance for about Rs 300 crore, and renamed it as InnoVen Capital. Later in July, Singapore's United Overseas Bank picked up 50% stake in the firm for an undisclosed amount. The two institutional investors have since invested $200 million in the venture debt firm.
As SVB India Finance and InnoVen, the firm has backed companies such as Snapdeal, FreeCharge, Myntra, Practo, Portea, Byju’s and Capillary Technologies, to name a few. Among these, four have seen exits by investors. “First it was CarWale, then Prizm Payments, Myntra and FreeCharge. All were buyouts and we made a little bit of extra returns in each of them, which across the board gives us a couple of percentage points of increased returns,†says Murali.
In this video interview with VCCircle, Murali speaks about how InnoVen is scaling up venture debt transactions, its new deals and the returns on its existing investments.
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