One of the most prominent venture capital firm in India – Accel Partners, is now all set to raise around $400 to $500 million in its fifth India focused fund. As per the report from ET, the firm is expected to close the fund by the end of this year.
In the past one year, the Accel has also doubled down on its seed stage investments for about $500,000 to $1-2 million. Many of those startups will soon be in the market to raise subsequent rounds of financing. This new fund could be focused towards those startups.
A person aware of the matter, said to Economic Times:
Initial conversations about the new fund have already begun with limited partners, or LPs (investors in funds). The amount is yet to be finalized, but it will be larger than their previous fund size.
Accel Partners entered India in 2008 when it acquired Erasmic Venture Fund. Since then, the firm has backed hundreds of companies such as BookMyShow, Freshdesk and Myntra, among others. Its one of the most famous bet in India include $1 million that it invested in eCommerce startup Flipkart in 2009.
It is currently utilizing its $305-million India Fund IV. From its fourth fund, the firm has invested in startups like food-delivery venture Swiggy, local services app UrbanClap, and rental marketplace RentoMojo, etc.
Prior to the fourth fund, Accel Partners India had raised $155 million as part of Accel India III in 2011 and $60 million as part of Accel India Venture Fund II in 2008 right after the merger with Erasmic Venture Fund.
Earlier this year, Accel US announced that it had raised around $2 billion, split between a $500 million for early-stage investing corpus and $1.5 billion for later-stage growth investments.
Few of the startups in which Accel invested has now become big brands like – BookMyShow, CommonFloor, Flipkart, FreshDesk, Myntra, Power2SME, Proptiger and TaxiForSure. It also had successful exits with Myntra (acquired by Flipkart), TaxiForSure (acquired by Ola) and Virident (acquired by Western Digital).
Recently, Mumbai-based early stage venture capital firm Matrix Partners India has raised additional $110 million for its second fund. With this, Matrix Partners India have a total corpus of $400 Mn in its second fund.
