Technology-focused home-grown venture capital firm Zodius Capital Advisors is raising a follow-on fund of around $35-$40 million (approximately Rs 266 crore) to make investments in niche e-commerce, financial technology (fin-tech) and business services start-ups, according to a news report by the Mint, citing a senior executive of the company.
The VC firm has already made the first close of the fund christened Zodius Technology Opportunities Fund at $30 million, around $22 million of which has come from domestic investors and rest from overseas investors, Gautam Patel, managing director of Zodius Capital told the paper.
Most domestic investors are family offices and high-net-worth individuals.
An emailed query sent to the fund seeking further information on the development did not elicit any response by the time of filing this article.
The new fund is an extension of the $110 million Zodius Technology Fund, which it had raised in May last year. From that fund, Zodius has invested in nine startups, including grocery startup Big Basket, online furniture seller PepperFry, online lingerie store Zivame and media startup Culture Machine.
The fund seeks to invest in sectors such as media technology, education, fin-tech and niche e-commerce.
Zodius will make fresh investments from the fund and is looking at total of six investments from the fund. Part of the new fund will also go towards meeting capital needs of its existing companies.
“We feel that there are companies in our portfolio where we would like to put more money in the next 12 months and our deal pipeline is quite deep right now where we can invest in three new companies,†Patel said.
Zodius Capital is promoted by Neeraj Bhargava, former CEO of business process outsourcing firm WNS Global Services, along with Gautam Patel and Shilpa Kulkarni. Bhargava, who co-founded WNS in 2002, led the BPO firm for a US listing. He was also the first investor in Deep Kalra founded-MakeMyTrip, the first Indian internet company to have gone public in the US.
