KKR executive Sanjay Nayar floats early-stage venture capital fund

Senior advisor for private equity firm KKR in India, Sanjay Nayar, announced the first close of his $125 million venture capital fund focused on early-stage tech investments in India. Investors in Sorin Investments, a fund founded by Sanjay, include the family offices of Nayar and Banga family, which owns Caravel Group headquartered in Hong Kong.

In an interview with The Economic Times, Sanjay Nayar said that the fund will be raising capital from nearly seven family offices and had received the necessary regulatory clearances to launch operations.

The fund will write cheques ranging from $2 million to $10 million across 10 to 15 companies, participating in Series A and B rounds. The fund will focus on fintech, health tech, direct-to-consumer brands, ecommerce, business-to-business technology companies and Software-as-a-Service startups. 

The fund has also appointed Anshul Bansal, former Vice President at Fireside Ventures and Harshita Kochar, a former associate at DAM Capital Advisors as founding members.

The announcement comes at a time when an increasing number of venture capital firms have sent out advisories to portfolio companies asking them to conserve cash. Growth rounds will be hard to come by, believe industry observers, as the likes of Tiger Global and SoftBank have adopted a wait and watch approach. 

According to a recent report by IVCA and EY, private equity and venture capital investments in April 2022 declined 27 percent year-on-year to $5.5 billion as a result of the slowdown in growth rounds.