Japanese venture capital firm GREE Ventures, which has already struck two deals in India, has hit the final close of its second fund at $67 million (around Rs 431 crore), according to a media report.
The VC firm’s second fund – AT-II Investment Limited Partnership Fund – had marked the first close at $37 million last year and was looking at a second close at $60 million.
GREE Ventures is a subsidiary of GREE Inc, a Japanese gaming and social networking firm. The parent company is one of the limited partners (LPs) in GREE Ventures’ new fund.
The other LPs in the second fund include Japanese corporate and financial institutions such as Organization for Small & Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation, Japan; and members of the Mizuho Financial Group, DealStreetAsia reported citing Nikhil Kapur, senior investment manager at GREE Ventures.
An email query sent to the fund did not elicit a response till the time of filing this report.
The fund, which has already invested in as many as 10 startups across India, Japan and Southeast Asia, invests in seed to early Series A stage startups with a ticket size of $0.5 million to $3 million.
India is expected to take only a small portion of this fund as it is still early days for GREE Ventures in the country, Kapur said.
The fund has invested in Delhi-based online community for women POPxo and on-demand fashion rental platform Flyrobe in the country.
The company's $50 million first fund – AT-I fund – was launched in 2014, with a focus on seed to Series A deals across the consumer internet, mobile services, marketing technology and cloud service sectors in Japan and Southeast Asian countries.
The VC firm will be competing with the likes of Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, SAIF Partners and Accel Partners in India that have already entrenched their presence in the country.
Other Japanese investors active in the Indian VC space include SoftBank, Rebright Partners and Netprice.com Inc. Japanese technology major SoftBank recently invested a whopping $1.4 billion (around Rs 9,000 crore) in One97 Communications Ltd, the parent of digital wallet Paytm.
SoftBank's other bets in heavily funded startups include Housing, Ola and Snapdeal, among others.
