While later stage startup fundraising maybe on a downhill globally, investors aren’t shying away to continue with early-stage/Series A deals. A validation of that is the announcement by a new India-focused early stage VC, Riverwalk Holdings, debuting with a ₹150 crore corpus. The fund is backed by Singapore based Thakral Group.
The investments will be sector agnostic, and will be mobilized in areas like Enterprise SaaS, Fintech and Consumer-tech brands. Riverwalk plans to shell out ₹10 crore per startup, and has already taken 4 startups under this new fund’s wing. The fund is set to be completely emptied into startup accounts by a year and a half.
The four startups that have drawn Riverwalk’s eyes towards them are Spotdraft(AI based contract automation startup); The Ayurveda Experience(one stop ayurveda platform); Mylo(community & commerce platform for parents); and Homeville(housing finance platform).
Satveer Singh Thakral, Founding Partner and Riverwalk Holdings, said, “The founding principles of Riverwalk have been shaped by the Thakral Group’s 117-year legacy of building successful businesses based on long term partnerships. The lifecycle of a start-up has its ups and downs and we are committed to being supportive throughout the journey. We are grateful to have like-minded investors who also share our investment philosophy.”
Riverwalk boasts of a seasoned leadership with over 10 years of experience investing into a collective list of 100+ startups across India, South East Asia and USA, noteable ones out of which include IPO bound branded pharmacy chain, Wellness Forever; AI based AML platform, backed by Standard Chartered Ventures and HSBC Ventures, Silent Eight; e-commerce SaaS platform, Anchanto; and consumer intelligence platform, Mobilewalla. The team has had highly profitable exits on their CV as well, including Karza Technologies, which has been acquired by Perfios for INR 600 crore; Dropsuite (ASX: DSE); LogiNext; Wigzo, acquired by Shiprocket; nCinga; and LBB.
Thakral added that Riverwalk will be capitalising on their vast stakeholder network to help accelerate startups that will be partnering with them via this new fund, by providing them access to leading enterprises across Asia.
Jai Sumer Singh, Founding Partner, said, “We are looking to partner with founders who are focused on building fundamentally strong and capital efficient businesses. This philosophy has worked out well for us in the past and we are just focused on replicating it.”
The move comes as two global venture capital Giants, Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital, have delivered red flag messages to the founders in their portfolio. YC even warned post series-A startups that haven’t found an optimum product-market fit to not expect further investment for some time.
