With India having emerged as a prime market, it is only natural that investors will turn towards it and back homegrown startups. That is exactly what ten-year-old Prime Venture Partners has been doing – investing in Indian startups and mentoring them to evolve into strong companies. Now, the decade old early-stage India-focussed venture capital fund has announced the final close of its fourth fund – Fund IV – as it raised $120 million.
With this, the oversubscribed fund exceeded the target of $100 million. Going forward, Prime says it will continue to make investments in disruptive technology companies across fintech, edtech, healthtech, consumer internet, and Global SaaS. In addition to prior focus areas, it has also expanded its portfolio into new areas, notably, EVs, B2B, Web3, and gaming infrastructure platforms.
The funds of Prime Venture Partners (four in total) now hold nearly $250 million of assets under management. The latest fund, Fund IV, is backed not only by Prime’s existing investors, but also by International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, a top-tier university endowment, a top-tier Fund of Funds, and several global technology entrepreneurs.
To recap, Prime’s first fund closed in 2012, was worth $8 million, and recently delivered a return of more than four times to all of its limited partners. Four years later, it closed its second fund at $46 million. In 2018, the third fund was worth $72 million. Through the first three funds, it has backed nearly 32 companies, across numerous sectors, including fintech, healthcare, SaaS, education, and logistics.
And most of these companies have gone to raise follow-on capital led by domestic and international investors in India within 18 months. With this, they have also successfully achieved strong product-market fit, follow-on rounds, profitability, or exits with meaningful outcomes to founders. Some were even acquired by high-profile players in their respective industries in recent times (expense management startup Happay by CRED last December, payment reconciliation software provider Recko by Stripe last October, and retail-technology startup Perpule by Amazon last March).
“With Fund IV, Prime VP is well-positioned to back a new group of category-defining technology startups and inspiring entrepreneurs in India. Fund IV is already off to an exciting start and we couldn’t be more optimistic about the depth of the entrepreneurial talent and increasing level of ambition among the founders in India,” said Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners.
