Inventus raises $125 mn to deploy in Indian firms

With a corpus of $125 million, mainly raised from global institutional investors and the founding members, the venture fund aims at investing in at least 15-20 early-growth companies over the next three years.

The VC firm intends to invest $1-10 million in companies in software products, services, Internet, mobile and other high growth technology sectors, in syndication with another venture firm.

To start with, Inventus Capital has participated in a $3.5 million institutional round raised by a Silicon Valley based IT firm with its development centre in Bangalore. Inventus is leading the round with $2 million investment, an announcement to which will be made in a few days, Rekhi told reporters in Bangalore. Besides, the company is in advance stage of talks with a Bangalore-based firm for funding, which is expected to be in the range of $2-3 million.

"I see many similarities between the entrepreneurial activities in India with that in the Silicon Valley. Our success in mentoring Silicon Valley based Indo-American entrepreneurs who created outstanding companies in that environment is directly relevant to the needs of Indian entrepreneurs. We formed Inventus to harness our unique combination of operating experience and mentoring skills to further catalyse India's entrepreneurial ecosystem," said Rekhi.

The partners of Inventus Capital hail from entrepreneurial background with experience in venture capital market. John Dougery, one of the co-founders of Inventus was heading venture investments at Bank of America Venture Partners, which was recently renamed as Scale Venture Partner.

Besides, Inventus has Bangalore based venture capitalists Samir Kumar and Parag Dhol as its co-founders.

Kumar was managing the Indian venture practice of Acer Technology Ventures, whereas Dhol was with Intel Capital India till recently in his over 15 years of career as a venture investor.