Private equity veteran Manish Kheterpal has floated a $15-million early-stage fund, WaterBridge Ventures that will focus on the pre-Series A to Series-A space. The fund is looking to bet on startups utilising technology at their core, and spread across sectors, including consumer focused mobile apps in media and telecom, ed-tech, health tech and fin-tech.

The Sebi-registered, India-domiciled fund, will primarily look to invest between Rs 75 lakh and Rs 3.5 crore in 12-15 ventures, and has a fund life cycle of 5-7 years. While taking about his plans to launch this fund, Manish said, "This is the best time to launch a new fund because the entrepreneurial activity has not come down as the ecosystem is maturing more now, and some froth is coming out."

The fund amount has been largely backed by a number of family offices, high net-worth individuals and companies, however, their names are still undisclosed.

WaterBridge Ventures, which has made its first close at $5 million, is the latest VC fund to be launched in 2016. "It helps that VCs have tightened the tap for later stages of funding, as those help with entrepreneurs driving sharper business plans in earlier stages, valuations are more realistic and conversations are more sensible," Kheterpal added.

Just today, early stage investment firm Blume Ventures has also hit a third close of its second venture capital and expects to complete the fund raising process in July. The firm has made more than 20 investments from the new fund in the last 13 months.

Image Source: ShutterStock
Advertisements

Post a Comment

Comment

Previous Post Next Post