Venture debt firm Stride Ventures on Wednesday said it has marked the first close of its second fund by raising more than half of the targeted corpus of Rs 1,000 crore ($137 million).
Stride Ventures India Fund II has secured commitments of Rs 550 crore to mark the first close, said the venture debt firm in a statement.
The second fund, which was launched just around two months ago, also has a greenshoe option to raise an additional Rs 875 crore.
"With the majority of investors from our maiden fund returning to invest in the new fund, we have had a quicker-than-expected first close," Ishpreet Gandhi, founder and managing partner, Stride Ventures, said.
Stride Ventures, a relatively young venture debt firm in the industry, did not specify the names of its Limited Partners (LPs) in the second fund. But it said that like its debut fund, the firm will diversify its investor base outside India as well.
The venture debt firm said second fund will ramp up deployment in late stage startups across sectors like business to business (B2B) commerce, healthcare, agritech, fintech and direct to consumer (D2C) brands. It will have an average ticket size up to Rs 75 crore.
Venture debt firms' focus on late-stage funding points to the maturity of the venture debt market that only a few years back was still referred to as being nascent in India, according to a VCCircle analysis recently.
Homegrown venture debt firm Trifecta Capital launched a new vehicle to focus on late-stage bets this year. Earlier this month, the new vehicle -- Trifecta Leaders Fund I -- marked the first close at over Rs 1,000 crore.
Other major venture debt players, Alteria Capital and InnoVen Capital have also been increasingly doing late state bets.
Stride Ventures is a relatively young player in the market. Its debut fund had received the capital market regulator’s approval in late 2019.
Within a month, it had also marked the first close that year.
It marked the final close of its debut fund earlier this year at over Rs 350 crore, which was its corpus target. It also had a greenshoe option to raise an additional Rs 150 crore.
The venture debt firm has invested in more than 20 companies from the first fund. It has also been actively investing since the pandemic began last year.
Recent investments include those in used car marketplace Spinny, business-to-business marketplace for packaging solutions Bizongo and marketplace for construction materials Infra.
Market, which stormed into the famed unicorn club of startups that have a valuation of at least $1 billion in February.
Last week, VCCircle reported that Stride Ventures has bet on a rural insurance marketplace backed by social impact investor Omidyar Network India and others
