<article>IvyCap Ventures, the largest home-grown venture capital fund in India, has launched an angel fund as it looks to increase its bet on early stage startups, said a senior executive.</article>

IvyCap Ventures, the largest home-grown venture capital fund in India, has launched an angel fund as it looks to increase its bet on early stage startups, said a senior executive.
IvyCap is targeting a corpus of up to ₹60 crore for the fund that will invest only in seed and pre-series A rounds. A part of the corpus will also be deployed in accelerating start-ups through collaborations with global accelerators.
“The fund will be invested in about 30-40 companies in the technology sector. Health tech, consumer tech and agricultural tech will be the focus areas. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality/virtual reality, and hardware, including infrared cameras, are some of the specific areas that we are evaluating,” said Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner, IvyCap Ventures.
Gupta expects the fund to be raised in the next two-three months.
The angel fund will see IvyCap take more risky bets than its earlier funds. “Compared to our regular fund, this fund will feature riskier bets. Although venture investing is generally risky, our first and second funds have had less risky investments relative to the risk we are looking at for the angel fund,” said Gupta.
The fund will be primarily raised from high net-worth individuals, comprising “alumni from Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management who hold professional and influential positions today,” he said.
A quarter of the angel fund will be used to tie up with foreign startup accelerators, which will help companies scale globally, he added.
This is the fourth fund launched by the Mumbai-based venture capital firm. It launched its maiden venture capital fund of ₹240 crore in 2012, and followed it up with a Fund II of ₹550 crore last year.
Last month, it also received approval from market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for a venture debt fund with a target size of ₹500 crore.
IvyCap is looking to achieve a first close of ₹250-300 crore for the debt fund by February next year, and will look to raise the remaining ₹200 crore by April or May. The money will be invested in Series B rounds onwards, outside of current portfolio companies, Gupta added. The average ticket size for these investments will be ₹15-25 crore each.
From Fund II, the firm has made two new investments—product rental marketplace GrabOnRent and fintech start-up ftcash, which serves the micro merchant segment by providing loans and multiple methods of payment.
GrabOnRent raised an undisclosed amount in June 2016 led by IvyCap and Unicorn India Ventures, while ftcash raised ₹1 crore in a pre-series A round from the IvyCamp platform, an incubator run by the venture capital firm.
The second fund will be investing in another 10-12 companies, with four or five investments in fintech and an average ticket size of ₹25-30 crore.
According to Gupta, 20% of Fund II has been invested in portfolio companies from Fund I, whose investments range across sectors, including beauty products retailer Purplle.com, jewellery designing startup BlueStone, an AI-based digital marketing platform and FarmBee, which provided data-driven agriculture technology and solutions.
This article was first published on <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Companies/AcBFYMcBiZSXicKllLInwN/IvyCap-Ventures-unveils-angel-fund-targets-60-crore-corpus.html">livemint.com</a>

IvyCap Ventures, the largest home-grown venture capital fund in India, has launched an angel fund as it looks to increase its bet on early stage startups.

India: IvyCap Ventures launches angel fund to capture early-stage opportunities

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India: IvyCap Ventures launches angel fund to capture early-stage opportunities

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