Kalaari Limited Partners Earned Over $600 Million in 2021

“We have done about 8-10 solid exits this year, some bigger than others. I think some of our funds have returned more than 2 times of the capital raised and still have significant portfolio holdings,” Vani Kola, Founder and Managing Director, Kalaari Capital said in an interview. Most of our funds will offer somewhere between 4x to 5x returns in total distribution over time,” he added.

According to Kola, the fund which was launched by Kalari in 2011 is by far the best fund in terms of returns. Further, he added that another Opportunity Fund launched in 2016 is giving strong returns to its LPs. The VC firm, which is currently investing from its fourth fund, has Reliance Industries in its LP.

According to Kola, about 40-45% of the funds are currently deployed, and the firm needs to provide follow-on capital to companies.

Kola’s comments come as the Indian startup experienced record fundraising from both international and domestic VC and private equity (PE) firms in a single year, which has generated 42 unicorns, or private equity, valued at more than $1 billion. companies have been born.

Kalaari Capital raised $75-90 million in 22 investments this year, ranking among the leading private market investors in India in terms of activity. The early-stage VC firm has partially outpaced some of its largest portfolio firms, including Dream11, SimplyRun, Milkbasket, Shop101, and others, generating healthy returns for its LPs in the process .

VC’s biggest success to date has been its partial exit from Dream11, the fantasy sports firm owned by Dream Sports. In a LinkedIn post on April 1, Kola said the VC firm had backed his LP for up to $206 million, without giving details.

This year, Kalaari Capital has invested in several new areas, including fintech, e-commerce, SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and NFT (fungible tokens).

According to Kola, the VC firm is still bullish on these sectors.

“We have invested in these deep-tech companies because of this growing tsunami in the services industry, in the product industry, emerging technologies and IP-based companies. These are things we couldn’t do for two to three years.’ she added.

The VC firm recently launched CXXO, which seeks to invest in women-led startups. As stated on its website, the mission of the program is “a playground for female founder-CEOs in shaping India’s digital future by creating exponential value in the economy”. Kalaari Capital has earmarked $10 million for the program and backed three companies. Aaj Tak – Samosa Party, Kindlife and Creative Galileo.

nikhil.patwardhan@livemint.com