Iron Pillar, a mid-stage-focussed venture capital firm, has invested in eight startups such as Uniphore, FreshToHome and Testbook from its debut fund of $90 million. It recently raised a top-up fund of $45 million to invest in its existing portfolio companies. The fund was oversubscribed.
Anand Prasanna, a managing partner at Iron Pillar, said that the plan towards late December was to raise a top-up vehicle of $30-33 million. However, some of its portfolio companies started seeing the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to grow and become profitable faster, he added.
So, the VC firm increased the size of the top-up fund and told some of its portfolio companies that it was ready to help with even more capital, he said.
The Limited Partners (LPs) who invested in the top-up fund dug deeper into the unit economics and long-term cash flow capabilities of its portfolio companies before investing in the fund, said Prasanna.
He also talked about the exit scenario and the advice the VC firm is giving to its portfolio firms on layoffs during the coronavirus crisis, among others.
