Stellaris Venture Partners, a VC firm that recently received $4.6 million from Infosys, has now announced that it has raised yet another $50 million. This time, along with Infosys, SIDBI and a few other investors have placed their bets on the said VC firm.
With the newly raised funding, the VC firm is now looking forward to fund ideas in the Series A stage. Alok Goyal, a partner of the VC firm, said,
Roughly, a quarter of the fund has come from individuals, and the remainder of the money has come from a combination of highquality institutional investors and the large family offices.
The firm is now aiming to cap the size of its maiden fund at $100 million. With around $55 million already raised, it’s now expecting to raise the rest of the money by the year-end.
Despite slowing investments and falling valuations of the startups, VC firms have managed to raise a significant amount of money. Earlier, firms like Sequoia Capital, Accel Venture Partners, among others have managed to raise funding.
According to the data from Venture Intelligence, VC funds which are focused towards the Indian market, have managed to raise $2.2 billion in the year 2016, a significant raise from the $1.5 billion in the previous year.
While most new VC firms focus on seed-stage investments, Stellaris is looking to invest up to $3 million upfront. The firm is building a network of 50 entrepreneurs and top professionals, called the founder network, in order to help source investments and advise portfolio companies.
Stellaris Venture Partners will be working closely with its strategic investors such as Infosys. Goyal says that they have a deep understanding of technology and the global footprint. So far, the VC firm has invested in just one startup — Wydr, a mobile based marketplace platform for wholesale buying and selling.
Earlier, a person aware of the development had said that the VC firm is also reaching out to “a lot of wealth managers who manage money for large family offices.”
The venture capital firm was set up by Alok Goyal, Rahul Chowdhri, and Ritesh Bangalani. All three of them were previously partners at India-based Helion Venture Partners. The firm describes itself as an early-stage venture fund looking to support the next generation of companies.
