Prime Venture Partners’ Fund IV closes at $120 million

Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage India-focused VC fund, announced the final close of its fourth fund of $120 million. The fund was oversubscribed and has exceeded its target of $100 million in commitments. It will invest in disruptive technology companies across fintech, edtech, healthtech, consumer internet and Global SaaS. Prime will continue to focus on being the first institutional investor, maintaining its high-conviction and deep-support investing model in early-stage technology startups. In addition to prior focus areas, the firm has expanded its portfolio into new areas, notably, EVs, B2B, Web3 and Gaming infrastructure platforms.

With this closing, the new fund takes the total capital under management across all Prime VP funds to over $250 million. In addition to existing investors, Fund IV is backed by International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, a top-tier university endowment, a top tier Fund of Funds and several global technology entrepreneurs, reflecting the strong performance of Prime VP’s earlier funds.

“We greatly appreciate and are humbled by the unambiguous support and confidence of our long-time LPs and new investors, which allowed us to complete an oversubscribed fundraise,” said Amit Somani, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners. “With Fund IV, Prime VP is well-positioned to back a new group of category-defining technology startups and inspiring entrepreneurs in India. Fund IV is already off to an exciting start and we couldn’t be more optimistic about the depth of the entrepreneurial talent and increasing level of ambition among the founders in India.”

With a highly selective and active involvement strategy, more than 90 per cent of companies backed by Prime VP at the seed stage go on to raise follow-on capital led by marquee investors in India and globally within 18 months and achieve strong product-market fit, follow-on rounds, profitability or exits with meaningful outcomes to founders. As per the Cambridge Associates benchmarks, all of Prime VP’s funds are in the top decile of all global VC funds of their respective vintages. Funds I to III are committed across 32 companies spanning sectors such as Fintech, Healthcare, SaaS, Education and Logistics. Prime VP’s Fund I recently delivered a strong, top-decile (4x+) return to all its Limited Partners.

Over the past decade, Prime VP has been the first institutional investor and built-up one of the richest portfolios of fintech startups. These include Niyo, a savings-led universal Neobank, Ezetap, a POS acceptance platform, Freo (Moneytap), the consumer-credit-led Neobank and KredX, the invoice discounting platform and OTO, the first two-wheeler leasing solution. Additionally, during the past 12 months, three of Prime’s early fintech investments were acquired by marquee brands. These include the acquisition of business expense, payments and travel management platform Happay by Cred for $180 Million, financial operations startup Recko by Stripe, and retail-technology startup Perpule by Amazon.

Other notable investments by Prime include Quizizz, an ed-tech platform used by more than 100 million students in 120 countries and PlanetSpark – one of the fastest-growing education players in the language and communications sector. The other investments include Sunstone – an innovator in new-age MBA programs, MFine, a telemedicine and home diagnostics provider, MyGate – a leader in (gated) community operating systems and Dozee – a pioneer in remote patient monitoring solutions.

Dear Reader,

Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance.

We, however, have a request.

As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed.

Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard.

Digital Editor