The private investment arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is investing $10 million in equity in Stellaris Venture Partners’ maiden fund, according to a recent announcement.
Started by former top executives of Helion Venture partners, Stellaris made the first close of its first $100 million dollar fund earlier in 2017. The company raised $50 million from Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), Infosys, and several individual investors, institutional investors, and family offices. Stellaris is one of very few Venture Capital funds to receive an investment from SIDBI.
Some of the individual investors include Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, Indifi founder Alok Mittal, Capillary Technologies’ CEO Aneesh Reddy, TaxiForSure cofounders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandhan G, and Neeraj Aggarwal, India head of Boston Consul ting Group.
IFC’s investment marks its third such fund commitment in an India-focused Venture Capital fund this year itself. The next close in the Stellaris fund is expected by June. Continuing to talk about the same, IFC said,
IFC’s presence as a potential co-investment partner/follow-on investor through IFC’s venture capital team will benefit the fund manager and its portfolio companies which need access to additional growth capital.
In January 2017, IFC proposed a $20 million investment in IDG Venture India’s third fund which recently completed the final close on its $200 million fund. More recently, IFC committed $3 million equity investment in piVentures, a fund that focuses on artificial intelligence and Internet of Things through its IFC Startup Catalyst program.
Although the pace of Venture Capital funding in the Indian startup sphere has fallen, venture funds dedicated to India have raised $2.2 billion in 2016, a significantly larger amount that the $1.5 billion from the previous year.
Earlier in November 2016, a report stated that Infosys was making its first local venture capital investment by putting in Rs. 31.6 crore in Stellaris’ maiden fund from the $500 million Innovation Fund.
Partners of Stellaris, Alok Goyal, Rahul Chowdhri, and Ritesh Banglani set up this fund last year to focus primarily on Series A and pre-Series A investments in technology and technology-enabled companies that focus on solving India specific problems.
In tandem with this, Stellaris recently announced two Series A investments. The first in Whatfix, which is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise solution provider for which it led a $3.6 million round and the second in an app-based B2B marketplace called Wydr.
