Stellaris Venture Partners to focus on consumer, AI, and deeptech

The VC firm will tap its $300 million Fund III to invest in at least 30 companies over the next three-and-a-half-year period, with different ticket sizes depending on stage

Early-stage venture capital firm Stellaris Venture Partners will tap its $300 million fund (Fund III) that closed in November last year to invest in at least 30 companies over the next three-and-a-half-year period, a senior member of the company's management said.

 

According to Rahul Chowdhri, a partner at the firm, it is currently deploying the fund's capital with a focus on three key sectors — consumer, artificial intelligence (AI), and deeptech.

 

"Currently, we are quite excited about AI, and we have made a few investments there, both on the enterprise and consumer sides. Then, we are excited about companies on the digital side, which means consumer tech businesses. And then lastly, we are interested in deeptech. So, these are the areas that we are interested in from an investment point of view," Chowdhri said.

 

From its Fund III, the firm has so far made seven investments. While four are yet to be made public, the remaining three include micro-drama (over-the-top) OTT platform FlickTV, online pharmacy company PlatinumRx, and babycare quick commerce platform Peeko.

 

Stellaris' portfolio includes companies such as the beauty and personal care brand Mamaearth, Gen AI platform Dashverse, vegan lifestyle brand Zouk, electric vehicle financing platform Turno, and vision-AI powered mobile app testing platform Drizz.

 

As for average ticket sizes, Chowdhri said: "In the seed stage, we write cheques between $1-3 million. In Series A, we are comfortable writing cheques between $3-10 million. Then, we also keep following capital because we are early-stage investors and need to have reserves as well."

 

The limited partners (LPs) for the latest fund were existing and new global investors, including university endowments, foundations, pension funds, and prominent funds of funds.

 

Earlier, in 2017, Stellaris raised its first fund with an $80 million corpus and made a total of 19 investments. In 2021, it raised its second fund, which was about $225 million, and made 26 investments.