Amit Rathore, an Indian entrepreneur and investor who is based in Silicon Valley, along with two US-based investors is launching two new funds with a combined corpus of about $244 million. They will invest in early-stage and late-stage technology ventures in the U.S, as well as in India.
Rathore is the founder of Silicon Valley-based digital publishing start-up Quintype. He has also launched a small-scale venture-capital firm along with Gunther Sonnenfeld and Andrew Markell called Higher Order VC. They’re now launching two new funds.
As per the reports, these new funds are said to close by the end of July. It is said that they have already received a majority of commitments from limited partners (LPs) for both the funds — called Return Capital I and II.
The new funds will invest in tech-based ventures in areas including data analytics, digital media, and technology products. Higher Order VC will also have other partners based out of London, Hong Kong, and India — managing the funds.
Amit Rathore said that the funds were ready to be deployed and would soon start investing in early-stage ventures. He added:
The first fund will mostly invest in early-stage firms and when these start-ups start to raise their next round, we would like to keep our percentage or double down, which will come from the second fund. If the ideas are growing fast, we’ll invest from the second fund. These two funds are going to invest in early-stage and late-stage ventures. It will be a data-driven funnel of funds.
Both the funds — Return Capital I and II, aim to crunch the time it takes for early-stage ventures to scale up and gain more out of their investments. Amit Rathore added:
We believe that the time-cycle of average start-ups should go down from seven years to perhaps five years or four years in this Internet age. We want to use data to potentially increase returns in venture capital.
He further said that ticket sizes of each deal will not be very large. However, it appears that one of the areas that Rathore want to bet big on is digital media.
The launch of the two new funds comes at a time when the global funding environment is witnessing rise, especially post SoftBank’s mammoth $93 billion Vision Fund. However, such large funds have already triggered concerns of a potential bubble due to the large funding rounds that are being led by the Japanese investment giant.
