Info Edge (India) Ltd, which actively invests in startups and counts food delivery company Zomato and insurance aggregator Policybazaar among its portfolio firms, is raising a new alternative investment fund.
The owner of jobs site Naukri.com, real estate portal 99acres.com and matrimonial website Jeevansathi.com said in a stock-exchange filing Wednesday that it will commit up to Rs 1,000 crore ($114.4 million) to the new fund.
The Noida-headquartered company, led by Sanjeev Bikhchandani and CEO Hitesh Oberoi, said Karkardooma Trust, a Category-II alternative investment fund registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India, will launch the IE Venture Investment Fund III and that its subsidiary Smartweb Internet Services Ltd will act as the fund’s sponsor.
The investment in the new fund is in line with the company’s “strategy on external financial investments that are focused on value creation in medium to long term prospects,” Info Edge said.
The company has invested in numerous companies over the years including in Mumbai-listed Zomato and Policybazaar, and privately held companies such as Bijnis, Shipsy, Gramophone, Shopkirana, and Adda247.
The new fund comes about five years after Info Edge launched its debut venture capital fund in 2020. In late 2020, Info Edge brought Temasek as the anchor limited partner for the debut VC fund with a cheque of about $50 million. Temasek later committed an additional $162.5 million in the debut fund’s follow-on vehicle and two new funds that Info Edge floated. Smartweb managed the company’s first and the second fund, IE Venture Investment Fund II, too. (For more details on Info Edge’s three funds, click here.)
It isn’t immediately clear whether Temasek will invest in the new fund, too.
Info Edge, which started Naukri.com in 1997, operates a slew of internet properties, including real estate portal 99acres.com and education services portal Shiksha.
Its venture arm actively invests in tech startups, but is sector agnostic, investing in areas with potential for ‘digital disruption’ mostly. It has an average cheque size of $300,000 to $5 million backing startups across the early to growth stages with follow-on investments as well, according to its website.
It provides patient capital with its long fund cycle and supports companies up to pre-IPO stage, as in the case of Zomato.