The fund has so far invested in five homegrown enterprise tech startups over the past 12-14 months. These include upskilling platform Disprz, anti-money laundering startup IntelleWings, transaction monitoring platform VuNet, enterprise tech player BluSapphire, and video-based sales startup Hippo Video. With an average ticket size of $2 Mn to $5 Mn, the cross-border fund is primarily focused on growth-stage startups which have generated revenues upwards of $500K.
The Dallas and Hyderabad-based venture capital (VC) firm Dallas Venture Capital (DVC) has announced the first close of its INR 350 Cr India-focused fund for enterprise tech startups. While it has raised INR 110 Cr as part of its first close, the VC firm plans to close the entire fund in the next 4-6 months. The B2B enterprise tech fund has a green shoe option of INR 140 Cr and plans to invest in 15-18 startups over a four-year period.
Note-: Greenshoe option allows the group of investment banks that underwrite an initial public offering (IPO) to buy and offer for sale 15% more shares at the same offering price than the issuing company originally planned to sell.
The fund is a SEBI-registered Category-II alternative investment fund (AIF) that has so far seen participation from India and US-based high net worth individuals (HNIs) and institutional investor IIFL.
Speaking to the media, Fund Partner at DVC Kiran Kalluri said that the fund was so far operating in stealth mode and has already participated in the fundraisers of as many startups. The fund has so far invested in five homegrown enterprise tech startups over the past 12-14 months. These include upskilling platform Disprz, anti-money laundering startup IntelleWings, transaction monitoring platform VuNet, enterprise tech player BluSapphire, and video-based sales startup Hippo Video. With an average ticket size of $2 Mn to $5 Mn, the cross-border fund is primarily focused on growth-stage startups which have generated revenues upwards of $500K.
The announcement of the fund launch comes at a time when space has been bogged down by its own set of challenges. Amid macroeconomic pressures and a funding winter in full swing, VC firms continue to sit on a big pile of dry powder, spending judiciously as funding dries up for startups.
As per the data available, 126 new funds were launched in 2022, raising a corpus of $18 Bn, up 300% from $6 Bn in 2021. Of these, 62 venture capital funds raised $13.9 Bn while 5 private equity funds bagged $2.5 Bn from limited partners in 2022.
While Sequoia India and Sequoia Southeast Asia closed one of the largest VC funds worth $2.85 Bn last year, Gurugram-based Elevation Capital also launched a $670 Mn fund in 2022. The momentum has continued well into 2023 as well. Earlier this month, reports emerged that VC firm Nexus Venture Partners was also in talks to raise a $700 Mn funds to back Indian and US-based tech startups.
