The brand new fund is bigger than its earlier three funds, which have persistently been $350 Mn
SAIF has closed about six investments this 12 months throughout sectors like client manufacturers, software program, training know-how and monetary know-how
SAIF Companions was additionally an early backer of unicorns like Paytm and Swiggy
SAIF Companions has raised $400 Mn for a brand new fund and rebranded the 18-year-old influential enterprise capital agency Elevation Capital because it appears to be like to again extra early-stage startups
The brand new fund’s closing comes slightly over two years after it closed a earlier fund. This may take its belongings beneath administration to over $1 Bn. The brand new fund can be bigger than its earlier three funds, which have persistently been $350 Mn.
SAIF has closed about six investments this 12 months throughout sectors like client manufacturers, software program, training know-how and monetary know-how. These corporations embody power bar maker Yoga Bar, SaaS-based startup Zomentum, Gurugram-based edtech startup Camp Ok12 and Jodo, which permits customers to pay faculty charges in instalments.
Whereas early-stage enterprise bets are its predominant focus, SAIF additionally invests about 20% of the corpus in public market transactions, the place it holds a stake in corporations for an extended interval. The agency has a portfolio of over 60 corporations, with places of work in Gurgaon and Bengaluru.
SAIF Companions has been investing in India since 2001. It specialises in non-public fairness and enterprise capital throughout Asia. Its focus space contains IT, ITes, industrials, monetary companies, Web, client product, and cellular.
“While SAIF enjoyed a great amount of equity in the ecosystem, the name itself didn’t communicate what we stand for. It was, at best, an acronym. So, as we looked to raise a new fund, we thought that it’s a good time where we should think about a new name and communicate what we stand for, and our investment ethos a lot better,” Ravi Adusumalli, managing accomplice, advised ET.
Elevation’s new fund comes at a time when a number of massive funds have been laser-focussed on writing first cheques for startups, making the marketplace for high-quality offers aggressive.
Within the final 12 months, Sequoia has raised $1.35 Bn, Accel $550 Mn and Lightspeed $275 Mn to deploy in India and Southeast Asia.
SAIF was based in 2001 as a joint India-China fund with Adusumalli main the primary funding in IT companies firm Sify.
Nevertheless, it was in 2010 that it raised its first India-dedicated fund of $350 million, adopted by two extra funds of the identical corpus. SAIF’s final fund, or fund six, closed in 2017 with an elevated give attention to seed stage offers.
Indian Startup Funding Recovers In Q3 2020
In comparison with Q2 2020, each the funding quantity and deal rely recovered by 167% and 46% respectively. Nevertheless, the funding quantity nonetheless stays 32% decrease in comparison with Q1 2020, whereas the deal rely was 25% greater in Q1. When in comparison with Q3 2019, each the funding quantity and offers in Q3 2020 remained comparatively low, indicating the adversarial influence of the pandemic on startup investments in 2020.
A research by Inc42Plus has revealed that between January to September 2020, to this point $8.1 Bn has been invested into Indian startups throughout 652 funding offers. Out of which 51% or $4.1 Bn was in Q1 2020. Whereas by way of deal rely Q3 2020 had the best contribution, accounting for 40% or 261 out of the 652 offers recorded this 12 months (as of 25th Sept).
