Early-stage SaaS-focused Pentathlon Ventures closes maiden fund at $10 mn

Pentathlon Ventures, an early-stage B2B SaaS-focused venture capital firm, said it has closed its first fund at Rs 76 crore ($10.3 million).

The oversubscribed fund plans to invest in over 20 startups in a year and invest between Rs 75 lakh and Rs 3 crore in each firm.  

Pune-based Pentathlon Ventures’s board has Gireendra Kasmalkar of Ideas to Impacts; Sandeep Chawda, former MD of Globant India; Madhukar Bhatia and Hemant Joshi, co-founders of Sapience Analytics; Shashank Deshpande of Clarice Technologies; and Saurabh Lahoti who has been part of three early-stage funds.  

Also on the board are Shirish Deodhar (serial entrepreneur), Martin Umaran (Globant), Mohan Kumar (Avataar Ventures), Pravin Bhalerao (Pranitya Wealth), and Abhishant Pant (The Fintech Meetup).  

“We are proud to say companies in our portfolio showed great resilience during the recent pandemic downturn. Their solid performances coupled with the consistency of our investment strategy are what I think ultimately struck a chord with a world-class pool of investors,” Saurabh Lahoti, managing partner at Pentathlon Ventures, said.  

Over the past year, micro venture capital funds have gained momentum in the ecosystem. These funds have a corpus of less than $30 million (Rs 200 crore) and invest in 10-15 startups  

This month, Gemba Capital launched its first micro-venture capital fund of $10 million (Rs 73.7 crore) which will invest in 24 early-stage startups.  

The fund said it will offer the first cheque of $250,000 (Rs 1.84 crore) and will keep a 35% reserve ratio to make follow-on investments. It will invest in startups across SaaS, consumer-tech, fintech, and deep-tech segments.