Ventureast has been investing in India since 1997 with focus on sectors like clean energy, health-tech and life sciences, and food and agri-tech. It was the first external investor in companies such as drugmaker Gland Pharma Ltd and milk distributor Dodla Dairy, which subsequently raised private equity funding.
The venture capital firm is currently investing out of its sixth fund, which is a technology-focused vehicle called Ventureast Proactive Fund II. Its recent bets include insure-tech firm Acko, fintech firm Kissht and rural e-commerce startup Boonbox.
In this podcast with VCCircle, Srikanth Sundararajan, partner at Ventureast, said that the VC firm has deployed two-thirds of the corpus and will make three to four deals from the new fund. Hence, the firm’s inaction on new deals this year was not necessarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic, he added.
Sundararajan said that three of Ventureast’s portfolio firms are in the midst of an equity fundraise while a few of them are resorting to venture debt and bridge funding.
He also talked about new themes emerging out of the pandemic, valuations and potential mergers and acquisitions in the market.