Venture Catalysts floats $100m growth-stage fintech fund

Startup incubator Venture Catalysts Thursday announced that it is launching its first growth fintech vehicle – Beams Fintech Fund – with a target corpus of $100 million.

Beams proposes to invest $8-10 million in the Series B and C stages in fintech companies, Venture Catalysts said in a statement.

The fund has the backing of banks, non-banking financial companies, fintech founders, family offices and ultra-high net worth individuals. It is already in the advanced stages of its first close and has started deploying, the statement added.

In addition to capital, Beams would also provide its portfolio companies access to local and international banks, insurance companies, NBFCs, mentors and advisors to expedite their go-to-market strategy in India and abroad. Besides, Beams would also provide access to VCATs 250+ portfolio companies and 195+ corporates for partnerships through Incubate Hub.

“We are in Fintech 3.0 right now in India, with the first wave of lending and payments companies having received a significant amount of capital and now the capital is moving across segments. Seasoned professionals and high-quality founders are moving out from larger firms to target newer categories to solve the long tail financial services demand in India,” said Beams co-founder and partner Sagar Agarvwal.

The Indian fintech market has 2300+ operational startups, of which 24 are unicorns (startups valued at $1 billion and above) and 15 are soonicorns (soon to be unicorns), according to the statement.

“We estimate that the maximum number of unicorns in India will be from the fintech space over the next decade,” Agarvwal said.

“We expect nearly $200 billion of new value creation by existing and new fintech companies in India over the next 5-7 years. Beams will primarily focus on segments such as embedded finance, enterprise SAAS products, neo banks and platforms catering to MSMEs,” added Dr Apoorva Sharma, co-founder & investment committee member, Beams.

Beams was co-founded by fintech veteran Sagar Agarvwal and Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain, Gaurav Jain. Naveen Surya, chairman of the Fintech Convergence Council and founder of ItzCash (now EbixInc), has been roped in as the fintech expert partner (non-executive) as part of the core founding team.