Trifecta Capital on Tuesday said it has marked the first close of its late-stage venture fund, less than four months after the firm said it is planning to launch the vehicle with a target corpus of Rs 1,500 crore ($200 million).
Trifecta Leaders Fund I has received commitments of over Rs 1,000 crore ($134.5 million) for the first close with the domestic portion oversubscribed, said the homegrown domestic venture debt firm in a statement.
The late stage fund has seen participation from domestic investors including large corporates, insurance companies, marquee family offices, ultra high net worth individuals (UHNIs), and entrepreneurs.
Investors who have invested in Trifecta Capital's debt funds have also made significant contributions to the venture debt firm's new fund.
Trifecta Capital is in discussions with domestic and global institutional investors to raise the remaining Rs 500 crore.
Trifecta Leaders Fund I 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.
Trifecta Leaders Fund I will typically invest $15-30 million each in around 10 companies for minority stakes through a combination of primary and secondary transactions.
Rahul Khanna, managing partner at Trifecta Capital, said that through the new fund the venture debt firm aims to provide investors access to the value creation opportunity in the last leg of private to public journey of tech companies.
"With strong institutional investor interest in India internet, we expect listings of several large well known startups, and creation of liquidity for existing investors as these companies tap the public markets for their longer term financing needs," he added.
The first close of Trifecta Capital's late stage fund comes just months after it announced the final close of its second venture debt fund at Rs 1,025 crore (around $140 million) earlier in March.
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.
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.
In a first for the industry, Trifecta Capital along with its two bigger rivals InnoVen Capital and Alteria Capital came together to finance a big debt round of fintech startup BharatPe earlier this year. The collaboration signalled that the rivals were ready to join hands at least for late-stage funding in mature startups.
