Flipkart backer Accel raises $450 mn for its fifth fund

Accel, one of India's most active early-stage venture capital firm known for being an early backer of e-commerce firms such as Flipkart and Bookmyshow, has closed its fifth India dedicated fund at $450 million. 

The new fund will start making investments from 2017 and is 40% larger than the fourth fund raised by Accel in March 2015, said a senior executive at the VC firm. 

One of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture funds famed for its investment in social networking site Facebook back in 2005, this will be Accel's largest fund for India. It was earlier called Accel Partners. 

The latest fundraise makes Accel the third largest VC firm in the country with assets under management crossing $1 billion, after Sequoia Capital India's $3 billion and Nexus Venture Partners' $1.2 billion. The fund comes 21 months after it raised its fourth India fund of $305 million. 

In India, Accel is known for its $1-million investment in 2009 in Flipkart, which was valued at $15.2 billion in its last fund-raise. Several investors have been marking down its valuation with Morgan Stanley pegging it at $5.58 billion at the end of September, down 38% from end-June. 

Accel also holds a stake in cab-hailing company Ola, which acquired its portfolio company Taxiforsure last year and classifieds portal Quikr, which acquired its portfolio firm Commonfloor earlier this year.  Accel, with an office in Bengaluru, has been investing in India for about 10 years, and has invested in 100 start-ups. In more than 80% of them, it started out as a seed investor. “We enjoy working with start-ups from the seed stage, and help them scale their businesses.” 

Accel plans to continue its focus on early-stage investments, which is seed and series A funding rounds. “We will also opportunistically look for growth opportunities,” the firm said. Sectors of focus for the new fund include consumer tech, enterprise/SaaS, financial technology, business-to-business companies and health care. 

Accel has been involved with these companies from the concept stage: BookMyShow, BlackBuck, BlueStone, CommonFloor (Quikr), Flipkart, FreshDesk, Mitra Biotech, Myntra, Portea, Power2SME, PropTiger, Swiggy, TaxiForSure (Ola), and UrbanClap, it said in a statement.