Accel India raises $650 million for 7th Venture Capital Fund

The seventh fund is up from the $550 million it raised for its sixth vehicle in 2019 and $450 million for its fifth fund in 2016.

With the latest funding, Accel’s commitment to the startup ecosystem in the region has grown to more than $2 billion, Accel said in a statement.

The new fund will seek to invest in next-generation e-commerce, emerging software as a service (SaaS), consumer fintech, global business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces, digital health and Web3.

Accel, which typically arrives at a seed stage and then continues to make follow-on investments, has been the first institutional investor in more than 87% of all portfolio companies.

Flipkart and Freshworks are examples of companies that have been backed by Accel from their initial seed round through all subsequent funding. Accel also got bumper returns from these two bets as Flipkart was acquired by Walmart in the biggest M&A deal in the startup ecosystem in India and Freshworks issued its initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq last year.

Accel has also been the first venture capital firm to back companies such as Accel, Blackbuck, BookMyShow, Bounce, BrowserStack, CleverTap, CureFit, Mindtical, Moglix, Ninjakart, Portea, Rupeck, Samunnati, StanzaLiving, UrbanClap and Genoty.

In the past years, Accel has also been investing in the Southeast Asian region. Its investments include investment app Pluang and accelerated commerce startup Astro.

“The opportunity to build breakout, innovative companies in this area is enormous, and Accel looks forward to expanding existing partnerships as well as creating new ones,” the statement said. “We are the first institutional investor in more than 85% of our investments in India and Southeast Asia, and 95% of our investments are seed or Series A,” the firm said.

Earlier this month, Accel India selected 14 startups as part of its first group of Atoms programme, which was launched last year to fund pre-seed in startups.

Last year, several early-stage VC firms announced fundraising milestones. Chirate Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners and Waterbridge Ventures announced the final closing of their new fund, and Bloom Ventures announced the first close.

Fundraising continues into 2022 as well. Just last week, early-stage venture capital firm Prime Venture Partners marked the final closing of its fourth fund at $120 million.

Earlier this year, IvyCap Ventures and pi Ventures also announced the first closure of their new fund.