Saama Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested in some of the most biggest Indian startups, including Paytm and Snapdeal, has closed its third fund by raising about $58 million. With this, the firm has now reached the $140 million mark.
Earlier last year, Saama had raised about $31 million in a fund-raising activity of its third fund. This new funding for the VC firm comes at a time when investments into Indian startups have slowed down, majorly because venture capitalists are currently assessing only the performance of their portfolio companies.
Even after raising this new third fund, the Bengaluru-based VC firm will continue its focus on investing in seed and Series A round of startups. As per the firm, smaller fund size make it easier to return capital to its investors, or limited partners (LPs).
The VC firm’s managing partner had earlier said that it is looking to invest between $2 million to $5 million in each company in Series A round and reserved around 100 percent to 150 percent for follow-on rounds. It is also looking to co-invest in early-stage ventures.
Ash Lilali, co-founder of Saama Capital, said,
People like the discipline we have on size. We have always stayed in the $50-75 million range and we have publicly told our LPs we will never go over $100 million of fund ever.
Saama Capital was founded by Ash Lilali and Suresh Shanmugham in the year 2011. Before that, both of them were leading venture investments for Silicon Valley Bank in the country.
While the firm was engaged in around eight new deals last year, it is now planning to move back to its pace of investing in four to six deals in an year.
The firm’s focus is on sectors, including financial technology, software as a service (SaaS) and non-technology consumer investments like Chai Point and Raw Pressery. It has already started deploying the fund of its third corpus, with recent investment in companies like wealth management app Fisdom and personal shopping assistant Mezi.
Earlier, Saama Capital had raised $54 million for its first fund when it was still under the SVB Capital Partners. Later, in 2012, it raised $26 million for the second fund.
The firm has also exited from several of its portfolio companies. It exited from e-commerce firm Snapdeal last year, which helped it return the entire second fund. Previously, it exited from TutorVista, Sula Vineyards, App Labs and Prizm Payment Services.
