Venture debt player Stride Ventures launches Rs 1,000-cr second fund

Announces greenshoe option to raise an additional Rs 875 cr

Venture debt fund Stride Ventures is rolling out its second fund with a targeted corpus of Rs 1,000 crore and a greenshoe option to raise an additional Rs 875 crore. The firm will continue investing in early to late-stage startups with ticket size from the new fund expected to go upto Rs 70 crore.

The new fund will have a commitment period of four years within which the capital will be deployed and recycled, said the company.

The fund will be primarily focusing on sectors such as B2B  commerce and SaaS, consumer, healthtech, fintech, agritech, amongst others. The second fund will see participation from large family offices, sovereign funds, PE funds, insurance firms, and HNIs across India, Singapore and GCC.

“Despite the pandemic, our Fund has served as a good diversification for our investors’ asset allocation, having continued to post strong and consistent returns. We have seen great interest from all our existing investors and are looking at onboarding new investors as well for Fund II. With these considerations in mind, we are looking at the first close of our second Fund within the next three months,” said Ishpreet Gandhi, Founder and Managing Partner, Stride Ventures.

Founded in 2019, Stride Ventures closed its maiden fund earlier this year after overshooting its initial target corpus of Rs 350 crore. It has funded more than 20 startups such as Pocket Aces, Miko, SUGAR Cosmetics, Infra.market, and Home Lane so far. The company has disbursed over Rs 200 crores since January this year. It has elevated Apoorva Sharma, a Principal at the firm, as as Partner for the second fund.

“We constantly innovate to provide customised credit structures for our portfolio companies and help them size debt capital around predictable cash flows to minimise risk,” said Abhinav Suri, Managing Partner, Stride Ventures.

Venture debt is an additional layer of capital that sits on top of equity funds. The demand for debt by startups has gained significant traction since the pandemic outbreak as companies have realised that businesses can’t be built on equity alone.

Last month venture debt provider Trifecta Capital had said that it will be launching its third fund sized Rs 1,500 crore with the aim to invest in new economy companies that are category-leaders and likely to pursue an IPO in the next 1-3-years. Venture debt player Alteria Capital had also in APril announced the first close of its second fund at Rs 1,325 crore.