Venture capital firm Prath Ventures has raised INR 120 Cr, marking the second close of its INR 225 Cr fund.
The second close was backed by SIDBI Funds of Funds and several other angel investors and family offices.
Founded in 2022 by Piyush Goenka and Harmanpreet Singh, Prath backs startups in seed and Series A stages. Since inception, it claims to have made three investments including Jimmy’s Cocktails, while the other two are still unannounced.
Goenka said, “Our investment philosophy is rooted in our deep understanding of the consumer sector and our unwavering commitment to value creation. By providing early-stage companies with not just capital but also strategic guidance and operational support, we aim to catalyse their growth trajectory and unlock their full potential.”
The VC firm is aiming to make the final close of the fund in the coming months and is actively investing now. The firm sees this as a good vintage to invest in and is looking to deploy the corpus in the next eighteen to twenty-four months.
The first close of the fund was announced last year in January with the raise of INR 50 Cr. Back then, it said that investment from this fund would range between INR 5 Cr and INR 6 Cr in about 20 startups.
SIDBI’s participation in this fund comes right after the government backed fund of funds raised $24.5 Mn from Green Climate Fund (GCF) for its maiden anchored sustainability and climate focussed fund Avaana Sustainability Fund (ASF).
Also, recently, A91 Partners announced that it is in the final stage to raise its largest ever fund to date at $700-750 Mn. Like SIDBI, this fund will also be largely deployed to back climate-tech startups.
According to Inc42’s Investor Landscape Report 2023 there are more than 2.5K VCs in India, which have backed over 4.4K startups since 2014.
