Accel Partner, which arguably lists among the most sought after global VC firms when it comes to startup investments, has today confirmed closure of its $550 million worth sixth venture fund in India. The announcement comes after Accel’s similar recent push in Europe and Israel, where it closed a $575 million fund.
This new fund is quite noteworthy given that the Silicon Valley-based firm, which began investing in India15 years ago, has infused roughly $1 billion through all its previous funds. Accel’s latest fund is much bigger than the $450 million it had raised for its fifth fund in late 2016.
The firm is mostly focused on early stage investments and Anand Daniel, a partner for Accel in India confirmed that the VC fund will continue to focus on identifying and investing in seed and early stage startups. He said: “We also selectively do growth investments for companies that are scaling well such as Swiggy, UrbanClap, BlackStone and Bounce. We have continued to back them through Series B and Series C rounds.”
Accel launched in India in 2008 by acquiring Erasmic Venture Fund. Erasmic’s founders Subrata Mitra, Prashanth Prakash and Mahendran Balachandran joined Accel as partners. Over the last decade Accel has considerably expanded its team. It now has nine partners and employs 51 people — a large number for a VC firm.
Like in many other markets, Accel’s track record in India is impressive. It participated in the seed financing round of e-commerce firm Flipkart, which was then valued at $4 million post-money. Last year, retail giant Walmart bought majority stake in Flipkart for a whooping $16 billion.
It has also invested in the seed round of SaaS giant Freshworks, which is now valued at over $3 billion, food delivery startup Swiggy, also valued at north of $3 billion, and recently turned unicorn BlackBuck. The venture capital firm has about 44 startups in its India portfolio that are valued at more than $100 million. The total market value of Accel’s portfolio firms stand at around $21 billion.
