2021 has become the golden year for the startup ecosystem in the world’s second-largest internet market, and it continues to yield rewards and make new records. Over 30 Indian startups have evolved into unicorns, while many more have grown and scaled up their businesses. In what is yet another funding success of the year, venture capital firm Better Capital raised its maiden fund of $15.28 million to scale its pre-seed and seed investment strategy backing early-stage startups. A record was also created as the fundraising was closed just 40 hours after it was launched.
The maiden fund will invest on a pro-rata basis in 40-50 sector agnostic pre-seed and seed-stage startups with a median check size of $300k, with the flexibility to write cheques up to $1 million. The firm has been investing in pre-seed stages in Indian companies since 2018 and has invested in over 125 companies across categories such as neobanks, fintech infrastructure, edtech, SME digitization – in fact, it has invested nearly $30 million over the last three years across companies such as Open, M2P Fintech, Rupeek, Teaching, Slice, Jupiter, and Khatabook. Now, it has eyes on the crypto sector and Web 3.0, cleantech, and creator-economy focussed startups.
The three-year-old investing outlet, founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Vaibhav Domkundwar, counts among its limited partners (LPs), founders, operators, and investors who are former or current leaders at Facebook (now Meta), Google, Uber, LinkedIn, Tiger Global, TPG, and others. This fund will be deployed over a period of 18-24 months across nearly 40 companies.
“Our LPs are not just extremely accomplished leaders, but they are deep believers in what we are doing at Better and want to actively support our founders,” Domkundwar, founder and CEO, Better Capital, said. “We have been fortunate to partner with several firms and have created a playbook to collaboratively co-build with founders from the idea stage and bring the right set of resources including access to top tier operators and global funds.”
