Trifecta Capital said it has launched its third venture debt fund that has a target corpus of Rs 1,000 crore and a green shoe option to raise another Rs 500 crore.
The homegrown venture debt firm aims to mark the first close of the fund by this year itself, said Trifecta Capital in a statement.
The launch of the third fund comes just months after Trifecta Capital marked the final close of its second fund at Rs 1,025 crore (around $140 million), slightly higher than the target of Rs 1,000 crore that included a greenshoe option of Rs 250 crore. In July, Trifecta Capital also marked the first close of its separate late-stage venture fund with commitments of over Rs 1000 crore.
Rahul Khanna, managing partner, Trifecta Capital, said in the statement that with the third venture debt fund it will strengthen its existing investor relationships and selectively add new investors.
Limited Partners (LPs), or investors, in its previous funds include domestic banks, insurance companies, development financial institutions, corporate treasuries and endowments.
Trifecta Capital seeks to get some large global financial conglomerates as LPs for its third fund.
In terms of sector focus, the third fund will invest in software-as-a-service (SaaS), direct-to-consumer (D2C), business-to-business (B2B) commerce, fintech and e-commerce sellers among others.
Trifecta Capital has invested around Rs 2,200 crore in over 85 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.
Venture debt has hotted up in India over the past few years as it rarely involves stake dilution by founders and provides startups with more time to grow.
It came into limelight in 2019 as new players entered the nascent industry, older players strengthened their war chest and mature startups such as Bigbasket and Lendingkart pocketed cheques as big as Rs 100 crore (about $13.6 million).
Till early 2017, the venture debt market in India was dominated by InnoVen Capital and Trifecta Capital. In the second half of 2017, former InnoVen Capital senior executives Vinod Murali and Ajay Hattangdi floated their own venture debt firm Alteria Capital.
In April, Alteria Capital raised commitments worth Rs 1,325 crore ($178.7 million) as part of the first close of its second consecutive venture debt fund, overshooting the final corpus target.
Stride Ventures, a relatively young player in the market, launched its second fund that has a corpus target of Rs 1,000 crore ($137 million) in May this year. The corpus target is nearly triple the size of the debut fund.
