The Capital Quest | Kae Capital closes third VC fund with $94-mn corpus

Kae Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, has closed its third fund at Rs 767 crore ($94 million), five years after raising its second investment vehicle to back tech startups.

The Mumbai- and Bengaluru-based firm said Thursday it aims to invest in 25 companies through the new fund. The sector-agnostic firm typically invests in pre-seed to pre-series A stages.

Kae Capital was started by Sasha Mirchandani, who also co-founded Mumbai Angels. The VC firm raised $25 million for its maiden fund in March 2012 and $53 million for its second fund in September 2017.

The firm said its third fund was backed by institutional investors such as Old Mutual Wealth, Velo Partners, and Finext. Family offices backing this fund are Kris Gopalakrishnan (Pratithi), Shashi Kiran Shetty (Allcargo), Sunil Kant Munjal (Hero Enterprise), SRF Family Office, DSP group’s Hemendra Kothari, Taparia Family Office, and Shashank Singh of Apax Partners.

Well-known startup founders such as Rajesh Yabaji (Blackbuck), Ashish Hemrajani (BookMyShow), Nitish Mittersain (Nazara), Srikanth Velamakanni (Fractal Analytics), Deep Kalra (MakeMyTrip), and Jitendra Gupta (Jupiter), among others, also contributed to the fund. Nazara founder Nitish Mittersain had participated in Kae’s second fund as well.

Kae Capital says it has invested in almost 80 startups since inceptions across sectors such as mobile, e-commerce, education, healthcare, and consumer internet. According to its website, it has clocked exits from 14 companies. Its portfolio includes health-tech companies Tata 1mg and HealthKart, fintech startups LoanTap and LoanZen, and the unicorn Zetwerk.

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