Unicorn India Ventures closes Rs 40-cr fund

Unicorn India Ventures, a SEBI-registered AIF-I VC fund, started by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar has closed Rs 40 crore of its Rs 100-crore fund.

The fund will invest in early stage startups in the areas like social media, mobile, analytics, cloud technology and Internet of Things (IoT).

Unicorn India Ventures has also appointed Aayush Jain as a Principal for the fund. Jain comes with over eight years of experience in corporate and product strategy, capital raising, business/corporate development and mergers and acquisitions across sectors including technology, media, cloud, digital, consumer and education.

Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures says: “Unicorn India Ventures has been started with an aim to discover start-ups that are doing groundbreaking work in their field. We want to be a partner in their journey towards growth and use our resources financial and otherwise to help them scale up. We want to bring best-of-breed international experiences to the start-ups.”

The fund plans to invest in 10-12 start-ups in a year, thereby creating a portfolio of 30 companies in three years. Their modus operandi to evaluate start-ups before investing in them is a unique one too. The partners spend close to 2-3 months with founders of start-ups to understand their business model, team at work and co-founders’ working relationship among other aspects like potential of scale up, global reach of the company etc.

Unicorn India has been structured as a hybrid fund whose first investment will enable start-ups with an seed  round in the range of Rs 50 lakh-Rs 1 crore, which would help companies build businesses and get ready for next round (Series A) where the fund will also participate as a co-investor.

Unicorn said it is betting on sectors like fintech, app-based business helping enterprise solution, cloud technology but a common thread among any of these start-ups should be that they are solving real life problems of either end users or other businesses.

Unicorn India has also constituted an advisory board which comprise of entrepreneurs and highly experienced professionals who will be mentoring the portfolio companies to grow. D D Ganguly, a Sillicon-Valley based serial entrepreneur, who started two companies and successfully exited them, is one of the members on the advisory board. The entrepreneurs will be able to use his experience and expertise to scale up their business and provide a good exit for the investors.