Quona Capital, a venture capital fund that focuses on the financial services sector in emerging economies including India, said it has marked the final close of its second fund at $203 million (around Rs 1,495 crore).
The new fund -- Accion Quona Inclusion Fund -- had an initial target corpus of $150 million, Quona Capital said in a statement.
Quona Capital was earlier called the Frontier Investment Group, which was part of Accion International. It is now a separate firm although Accion is an anchor investor in its funds.
The Limited Partners (LPs) in the new fund include global asset managers, insurance companies, investment and commercial banks, it said. University endowments, foundations, family offices, and development finance institutions also contributed to the fund, it added without disclosing their identities.
In May last year, International Finance Corporation (IFC) had proposed to contribute $12 million (Rs 83.6 crore) to the Accion Quona Inclusion Fund.
The new fund will focus on scale-up stage financial technology companies catering to the underserved consumers and small businesses in Latin America, Africa, India and Southeast Asia. The first fund -- Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund – followed a similar strategy.
In its previous outing, Quona Capital raised $141 million. IFC was also an LP in the previous fund. Other LPs in that fund included AXA Impact Fund, Blue Haven Initiative, Calvert Equity Portfolio, Dalio Foundation, Heifer Foundation, IDP Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co, MasterCard, MetLife, PG Impact Investments and Prudential Financial Inc.
Quona Capital’s portfolio in India includes IndiaMart, CreditMantri, NeoGrowth, Fisdom, ZestMoney and SMEcorner.
Quona Capital said it has made two exits to date including IndiaMart, a B2B e-commerce company in India that made a strong stock market debut last year.
There has been heightened interest in the financial technology segment over the past few years and some investment firms have launched sector-focused funds in line.
In October last year, Varanium Capital, a boutique asset management company, marked the first close of its debut fintech-focused venture capital fund.
In September, seed-stage impact investor Accion Venture Lab said it is raising new fintech-focused fund.
Earlier in January, US-based fintech-focussed investor Ribbit Capital, which counts Indian unicorn Policybazaar among its portfolio companies, floated its sixth global fund.
