Mumbai-based venture capital firm Prath Ventures said Wednesday it has made the second close of its maiden fund at Rs 120 crore ($14.5 million).
The second close saw participation from SIDBI Funds of Funds and several founders and family offices, the VC firm said. It made its first close at around Rs 50 crore last year.
Prath Ventures, which primarily invests in consumer-centric businesses, was cofounded by Piyush Goenka and Harmanpreet Singh. Goenka is a former partner at Tano Capital while Singh has been previously associated with Multiples Private Equity. They have been involved in many consumer businesses including Safari Industries, PVR, Good Glamm Group, and Vastu Housing, among others.
Before founding Prath Ventures, they made angel investments in over 20 startups including Believe Pte Ltd, Style Bazaar, Mosaic Wellness, Gokwik, Falcon, Lysto, and BridgeUp.
Prath Ventures invests across seed to Series A stages. To date, it has made three investments, including beverage maker Jimmy’s Cocktails. It hasn't disclosed the names of the two other investments in consumer brands in the lifestyle and travel sectors.
"Our unique value proposition lies in our ability to blend venture capital agility with the discipline and rigour of private equity," said Singh. "The fund will seek to deliver the best of Indian consumption opportunity to our LPs while adhering to the highest standards of institutional fund management.”
Prath Ventures is targeting its final close in the coming months and is actively investing now. The firm is looking to deploy the corpus in the next 18-24 months. The fund has a target corpus of around Rs 225 crore.
In a previous interaction with VCCircle, the VC firm’s cofounders said the fund would look to make around 20 deals, cutting an average cheque size of Rs 5-6 crore. It is looking to invest Rs 1-15 crore in the portfolio companies.