Falcon Edge Capital, a New York-based hedge fund that has invested in cab-hailing firm Ola and online classifieds firm Quikr, has raised $45.7 million (Rs 324.6 crore) for its first India-focused fund.
The Falcon Edge India-I LP fund, which is registered in the Cayman Islands, has raised the capital from nine investors, Falcon Edge Capital said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It did not disclose the name of the investors and the target amount it seeks to raise.
VCCircle had reported a year earlier that Falcon Edge Capital had received commitments of about $75 million (Rs 535 crore) for the fund and was looking to raise upwards of $100 million.
Falcon Edge Capital was founded in 2012 by Richard Gerson, along with Navroz D Udwadia and Ryan Khoury. It manages more than $2 billion in assets globally.
The hedge fund has been quite active in India. It started by investing in real estate listing portal Housing.com in 2014 and has placed at least a dozen bets in the country, according to VCCEdge, the research arm of Mosaic Digital.
Last year, it placed at least four new bets in the country: Student housing startup Stanza Living, dockless scooter-sharing platform Bounce, social commerce firm DealShare and vPhrase Analytics.
Its earlier investments include digital lender OfBusiness, non-banking financial company JM Financial Credit Solutions, mobile payments firm Mswipe and news aggregator Dailyhunt.
Falcon Edge makes smaller as well as larger investments and focuses on technology companies that cater to the growing consumer base in India, according to an industry executive, who didn't wish to be named. It has made most of its India investments with other global investors such as DST Global, Tiger Global Management, DSG Consumer Partners and Omidyar Network India.
Falcon Edge Capital’s India-focused fund is good news for startups in the country amid murmurs of a funding winter because of the economic slowdown.
Last year, venture investments beat the pangs of an economic slowdown led by a welcome uptick in early-stage transactions, but startups continued to struggle for their first funding cheque as angel and seed deals declined.