Venture Highway, a VC firm which invests in early-stage startups, has announced that it has raised $78.6 million in its second fund focused on technology seed investment for Indian startups.
With the second fund, the firm is now expected to invest around $1 million on average in early-stage startups. It also plans to partner with capital-efficient technology businesses for the same.
Founder Samir Sood said that the fund raise will be used for new investments in about 30 early-stage tech companies. Apart from providing institutional capital to startups, the venture capital firm will also offer guidance to the management teams of the ventures that it invests in from this second fund.
In a statement, he said: “We are extremely passionate about helping advise technology entrepreneurs build their businesses with our local and global networks. Our goal is to give back to our country’s early-stage ecosystem and we continue to be extremely excited about the quality of the current generation of entrepreneurs building large businesses out of India.”
Venture Highway has invested in several startups, including OkCredit, Meesho, Moglix, Marsplay, Sharechat, WMall, Stellapps Technologies, and Original4Sure.
Founded in 2015 by Samir Sood, the fund has investments by him and advisor Neeraj Arora, who was a global business head at WhatsApp. Neeraj is now the founding anchor limited partner of the Mauritius-headquartered fund.
The VC firm’s founder Samir Sood has previously worked at global technology firms such as Google, Microsoft and Cisco Systems. He is an alumnus of the University of Chicago and Tufts University. At Google, he was the head of its South Asia and Australia mergers and acquisitions.
