Venture debt firm Trifecta Capital has appointed Sandeep Bapat as a partner for its late-stage tech investment business.
Rahul Khanna, managing partner, Trifecta Capital said in a LinkedIn post that Bapat's experience as both a private tech and public investor will give the company a strong foundation in late stage and crossover investing.
Prior to this appointment, Bapat was executive director at private equity firm Hillhouse. Bapat, an IIT Bombay graduate, worked with Blackstone earlier.
Trifecta Capital, which had been making typical venture debt bets from its previous funds, planned to launch a new vehicle to focus on late-stage bets in April.
Earlier this month, the new vehicle -- Trifecta Leaders Fund I -- marked the first close at over Rs 1000 crore
The late-stage venture fund will invest in category-leading startups, selected predominantly from Trifecta Capital’s portfolio across venture debt funds.
It will also invest in businesses with which it has deep relationships with founders and investors.
In November last year, Trifecta Capital appointed Lavanya Ashok, its first female partner.
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
Trifecta Capital has invested in over 70 companies across two venture debt funds.
It has backed unicorns and soonicorns including Bigbasket, Pharmeasy, Cars24, Vedantu, Infra.Market, ShareChat, and Dailyhunt.
Other investments include Practo, UrbanCompany, CarDekho, Blackbuck, Ninjacart, NoBroker, Kreditbee, Dehaat, Turtlemint, Livspace and BharatPe.
In March, Trifecta Capital announced the final close of its second venture debt fund at Rs 1,025 crore (around $140 million).