 "Arjun Rao, general partner, Speciale Invest")
Deep-tech investment firm Speciale Invest, which backs seed-stage and early-stage companies, is planning to launch its third fund as the current fund nears completion. The firm did not disclose the size of the upcoming fund but stated that it would be slightly larger than its previous fund, which stood at ₹300 crore.
The firm plans to make five to six investments from the upcoming fund in the first year, with an average ticket size ranging between $0.75 million and $1 million, said Arjun Rao, general partner at the firm.
“We are working on it (Fund III)... Fund II will be fully deployed in the coming weeks or months, and then we should be ready to make new investments, and that will be a classic Fund III. The overall size will be a little larger than the last fund, but not significantly larger,” Rao said.
Speciale Invest has backed companies including space-tech firm Agnikul Cosmos, flying taxi startup The ePlane Company, and semiconductor company Morphing Machines, among others.
Over the past eight years, the firm has operated three funds — Fund I, Fund II, and an additional growth fund. Rao said the majority of limited partners are domestic, and capital has been raised from family offices, high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), ultra-HNIs, corporates, and some members of the Indian diaspora abroad.
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Fund I, launched in 2017, had a corpus of ₹60 crore, with investments in 18 companies. The average investment size was around $0.5 million. Apart from Agnikul Cosmos and The ePlane Company, other portfolio firms from this fund include robotics startup CynLr and space-tech firm GalaxEye.
Fund II, launched in 2021, scaled up fivefold to ₹300 crore. As the fund nears full deployment, the firm expects to invest in one or two more companies. So far, it has backed 17 companies. Investment sizes ranged from $0.5 million to $1 million. Notable investments from this fund include climate-tech startup Newtrace, cybersecurity firm QNu Labs, and drug discovery startup Peptris.
In 2023, Speciale Invest also raised a ₹185 crore growth fund to participate in follow-on rounds of its existing portfolio companies. “We raised a growth fund in 2023 which amounted to ₹185 crore. We invested in around 5–6 companies from Fund I and Fund II. We can invest in a total of 8–10 companies from this fund,” Rao said.
On exit performance, Rao said, “They have all been healthy, positive multiple outcomes, some in the range of 2x to 8x multiples on mergers and acquisitions. These early-to-young companies were acquired by larger, strategic players who found value in the product, technology, and team.”
He noted that Wingman was acquired by Clari, a global player in the sales intelligence space, and augmented reality startup Scapic was acquired by Walmart-owned Flipkart. In total, there have been seven exits.
While the firm identifies as sector-agnostic, it sees high-growth opportunities in space technology, climate and sustainability, manufacturing, defence, industrial automation and robotics, artificial intelligence in enterprise infrastructure, biotech, and life sciences.
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