“India is growing rapidly in terms of our dollar allocation. So around 50% or even more of the new funds may go to India,” Amit Anand, founding partner, Jungle Ventures, told VCircle in an interaction.
In a separate statement, Jungle Ventures said the $600 million amount includes $450 million in core funds and $150 million in additional managed commitments.
He said that Indian entrepreneurs have become more ambitious who no longer want to be leaders in the domestic market but want to be leaders in South East Asia, Middle East and in some cases globally.
“We were probably the first investors who told entrepreneurs we would help you go global. In 2012 we invested in Zipdial and helped them go global and it was sold to Twitter. Today if you want to see some of our Looking at recent companies like Turtlemint, Leap, Moglix, Livspace, Wayana Network, we have helped all these companies to expand outside India.”
More than 50% of the total commitments to the new fund came from existing investors, including Temasek, International Finance Corp (IFC), Dutch investor FMO and German development finance institution DEG. “If I look at all our major existing LPs, each of them has revalued between 100-200% in our new fund,” Anand said.
Anand said Jungle Ventures has also roped in new investors such as Japan’s Mizuho Bank Ltd and global asset manager Stepstone Group.
He also said that 50% of its LPs are family offices and the remaining half are institutions. In terms of the geographic division between LPs, it is roughly a third between Asia, Europe and the Americas.
“We curate our LP base to ensure there is great diversity and see them as our extended family supporting our portfolio companies through co-investment, market intelligence and market access.”
In terms of co-investments with its LPs, for every dollar Jungle Ventures invests in its portfolio company, approximately $1.2-$1.3 is invested by its LPs.
The latest fundraising has brought Jungle Ventures’ total assets under management (AUM) to more than $1 billion. The Singapore-based investor, founded by Anand and Anurag Srivastava, raised $10 million for its first fund in 2012. The VC firm raised $100 million for its second fund in 2016 and $240 million for its third fund in 2019.
Anand underlined that even as the fourth fund is larger, Jungle Ventures will continue to maintain a focused portfolio of 15-18 companies in India and Southeast Asia. This means Jungle Ventures will reserve more capital for follow-on bets on its portfolio companies.
So far, Jungle Ventures has invested $1 million each in its company, with a follow-on of typically $2-10 million. “If you look at Livspace and Moglix, we’ve been investors in them since they became unicorns and we’re still investing in them. With more firepower now we can do more follow-on investments from new funds,” They said. A unicorn is a privately held startup with a valuation of at least $1 billion.
Fourth Fund raised $225 million for the first time in September last year. Anand said he has promised around 10% corpus so far. The new fund’s investments in India include Eveworld, a Web3-based social-crypto-community platform for women), Infido, an employee experience software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, and Atomberg, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) consumer electronics brand.
Anand explained that the big new macro theme that Jungle Ventures is now rolling out is putting more capital behind decentralization.
“We are living in a very interesting time where decentralization is creating a more equitable Internet and so, we like that approach. We think the power of the Internet in the hands of the smallest participant in the Internet economy is the way forward. The right way because the next wave of innovation happens,” he said.
Hence concepts like social commerce where businesses are empowering small entrepreneurs and helping them compete with the Amazon of the world, or concepts like Web3 where businesses are enabling local entrepreneurs with the latest technology to help them do this. Tell how the business is run. VC firm.
Web3 or Web 3.0 stands for a decentralized version of the Internet that runs on peer-to-peer technologies such as public blockchains.
Other venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital and Accel have also increased their focus on Web3 investments in India. Recently, VCCircle also wrote about the interest in cryptocurrencies and Web3 by venture capital firms such as Rocketship.vc, Lightspeed and General Catalyst.
Jungle Ventures is also assessing edtech startups leveraging Web3 and has already bet on a startup that is in stealth mode. “We have invested in an edtech company that is bringing the power of AI (artificial intelligence) and decentralization to the next wave of teachers and mentors,” he said without disclosing his identity.
He also said that the fund will selectively invest in startups in the food and climate sectors where it is seeing “interesting business models emerge”.
In terms of exits, he said Jungle Ventures has generated a gross internal rate of return (IRR) of 40% across all funds through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and secondary sales. He said he expects to exit through an initial public offering (IPO) in the coming years as its portfolio companies reach a massive scale.
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. In March, Accel India, an early backer of startups such as Flipkart and FreshWorks, raised $650 million in commitments for its seventh fund to invest in new opportunities such as emerging technology in India and Southeast Asia. In February, early-stage venture capital firm Prime Venture Partners marked the final closing of its fourth fund for $120 million.
Last month, Arkam Ventures, a venture capital firm started by former executives of Helion Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital, marked the final closing of its first fund for $106 million. Fintech-focused fund Beams Fintech Fund also completed the first closing of its first growth-stage fund last month.