Anthill Ventures to roll out global fund, eyes big-ticket investments

Will invest in global startups looking to raise Series A, B and C round, size of fund is likely to be about $150 mn

Investment and scaling platform Anthill Ventures is raising its second fund, which will focus on large-ticket investments. The second fund will invest in global startups looking to raise Series A, B and C round, and its size is likely to be around $150 million.

While Anthill Founder & CEO Prasad Vanga confrimed that they are rasing the second fund, he did not comment on the size of the fund.

“We are raising the second fund so that we can own the pipeline from seed stage, all the way up to big ticket fundings,” said the former Genpact executive, who founded Anthill in 2015.

The second fund, which is likely to be rolled out next month, will be making bets on at least 30 startups over the course of a couple of years. Anthill’s current LPs are a combination of family offices, and strategic institutional investors.

The platform which follows a VC-accelerator model is currently deploying seed and pre-Series A investments from its first fund of Rs 80 crore fund. It has invested about Rs 20 crore in 19 startups from this India-focussed fund and has a target to bet on 36 startups overall from this fund.

“The new fund will pick up the winners of the old fund. Plus, we will also invest into new companies,” said Vanga.

Overall in the past six years Anthill has invested in more than 40 startups globally in the health, media and urban tech spaces such as Rooter, WedMeGood and DoctorC.

The platform is also rolling out an accelerator programme for startups in the urban technology space. Called Indus X, it will be a six-month-long programme where 8-10 pre-series A and Series A startups will be mentored to scale with speed. The startups which reach their milestones and achieve scale will receive an investment from Anthill and other co-investors to the tune of $1-3 million.

“Our first cohort should be between seven to 10 companies, of which we have already invested in a few of them,” said Zaran Bhagwagar, Head of A Scale, Anthill Ventures. The platform intends to run two such cohorts every year for the next four or five years, which means it will be mentoring 14-20 startups in the urban technology space encompassing trends such as clean water, clean energy, smart city management.