Vani Kola's venture firm Kalaari Capital's investment in fantasy sports firm Dream11 has hit a spectacular six.
In a LinkedIn post on Thursday, Kola said that its bet on Dream11 has already helped return $206 million to its Limited Partners (LPs) with manifold upside for shares still locked into the company.
Although Kola did not specify the amount it invested, the early investor must have netted a multibagger even by conservative calculations.
Kola said in the post that it had extended a Series A term sheet to Dream11 along with Shashin Shah of Think Investments at a $13 million valuation in 2014.
Kalaari has been making partial exits from Dream11. In 2019, the venture firm and Multiples PE sold part of their stakes to Steadview Capital in a transaction that valued the gaming company at more than $1 billion.
The following year, it made a partial exit when Dream11 raised fresh capital from investment firms including US-based Tiger Global Management and TPG.
Last month, Kalaari harvested a part of its investment when Dream11 scored a $400 million secondary investment from a slew of investors.
The deal marked the first-ever India investment for Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm TCV.
In 2014, Kalaari made a blockbuster exit from Myntra when the fashion portal was bought by Flipkart for $286 million. As part of the deal, the venture firm received an undisclosed quantum of stake in Flipkart.
Kalaari's another exit was from its most popular portfolio firm Snapdeal in 2015. It reportedly took out its principal amount.
Another exit for the venture capital firm came in 2017 when US-based Ebix Inc acquired Via.com, one of Kalaari's earliest bets.
Last year, Kalaari along with other investors such as Sequoia Capital and Elevation Capital sold stake in Urban Ladder at a fraction of its peak valuation following the acquisition by Reliance.
Notably, Reliance has in the past few years bought a bunch of Kalaari's portfolio firms such as Urban Ladder, Zivame, Embibe and Haptik.
This raised conflict of interest concerns as Reliance is coming in as an anchor investor in Kalaari Capital's fourth fund.
