What delayed this post?
First of all kudos to Ganesh, Arjun, the consultants and our internal team at a99 for getting the SEBI registration done for our fund, its got a nice ring to it when we say “ We are a SEBI regd. CAT I Venture Capital Fund”. The process was pretty smooth with Vishwas of Vantage Point advising us along each step. Also SEBI stuck to their turn around time and gave us the approval within 21 working days. For all the stories on how applications are bundled up and how SEBI delays etc, they remain just that.. STORIES! It’s time we appreciate the vigour with which some of our govt. Organisations work.
So we are officially on fund raise mode (unofficially we have always been on fund raise mode) and all of us are on the road. The response has been good and should/will get better. On a daily basis we get to appreciate the saying “ Expect the Unexpected” esp. with our fund raise. People who said yes say no, people who say no say yes, people who don’t have a clue about us like our thesis. People who love our thesis give us inputs on how Crypto as a theme shouldn’t be in our presentation! I just love the process and I try my level best to avoid a No and be as accommodating as possible with feedback. Also the famous “Kitna Deti Hai?” Is often repeated when we reach the returns slide in our deck.
Since the fund raise was not excitement enough, we have decided to move to a new space in the heart of chennai, away from the Zoom/teams calls and getting to work with people in person. We are designing and getting the space done up, we should be ready 1st week of July(will post pictures) We have a new Senior Analyst, who does not not have any investing or Vc experience prior, but a keen sense of understanding businesses and numbers (comes from KPMG in his past), also we have roped in a few smart interns to help us out as well.
Now getting to the investments side, we have frozen our first 3 investment ideas for the new fund, they are in diverse segments such as Electric Mobility (which will most likely become a theme) Hyper Automation (unique and forward looking business model) and a deep tech SAAS platform for the BFSI segment. The term sheet are out and DD underway, we are waiting to announce these investments and will do so very soon! All of these businesses are indigenous and are made in India for the world. This relates to the core of our investment philosophy – “ We identify invest and catalyse businesses for the Indian century” “also to invest in businesses which have revenue streams with a clear visibility on margins and profitability ” #superexcited ,
As i stated in the earlier blog, we don’t forget our roots, this applies to our past Investments as well, A couple of them (Vajro / Futurice) have forged ahead with Series A and significant organic progression in the recent past. We are super excited to share that Intents Mobi one of our earlier bets in the Mapping and Data analytics space have raised a CCD of USD 1M as a bridge prior to their Series A raise. This gives them the runway to progressively grow the business and have a significant Series A. It’s heartening to see the growth in the company from the time we invested in them.
With the learning we had through our earlier investments we plan to build a strong portfolio with the current fund and i can confidently say we have laid a solid foundation for the same with our proposed investments.
That’s it for this one, We plan to do a couple of podcasts with some of our founders and also a few people who inspire us and keep us grounded.
Watch this space for more!