IDG Ventures, one of the more VC firm investing heavily into India’s tech startup ecosystem, is now looking to raise its third fund worth $200 million, reports ET. While there is no official word from the firm on the same, this has been revealed by the three people familiar of the development.
The fund raising for the firm’s third round is expected to begin from October 2015. For this round, the firm is looking for domestic as well as oversees investors.
Founded in 1996, IDG Ventures has assets worth more than $4 billion under management, and over 200 investee companies and 10 offices across Asia and North America. It recently appointed Ratan Tata as a special adviser.
The firm typically invests between $1 million to $10 million at early and expansion stages in technology and technology enabled ventures in Digital Consumer, Enterprise Software and Engineering sectors. However, since the corpus is a bigger one this time, you can expect these investments to rise in number.
In India, IDG Ventures has invested in Zivame.com, Zimmber, AgroStar, Tripoto, Nest Away, etc. It has made 77 investments in 43 Indian start-ups through its sub-organization named IDG Ventures India.
As per the source, the firm has started approaching family offices, and has approached 150 family offices. It has received commitments of about 50% till now. Previously, in November 2014, the firm had raised Rs. 600 crore.
Typically, the fund raising process by VC firms are carried out after a gap of two to three years. But that is now changing due to serge in entrepreneurial activities in India and massive funding requirements by India’s fast growing startups.
Sequoia Capital, perhaps one of the most active VC firm, which raised $530 million in May 2014 is now looking to raise a whooping $800 million for India focused fund by the end of this year.
Recently, Jungle Ventures announced that it is raising $100 million in its second fund for Asia. Prior to that, Kalaari Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners announced that they are raising $290 million and $135 million respectively.
