Bessemer Venture Partners, the San Francisco-based backer behind the likes of Anthropic, AppliedAI along with several high profile Indian upstarts such as Urban Company, BigBasket, LivSpace, has announced its second India Fund. Pegged at US$350Mn, it will be amongst the largest India-focused allocations done by a global or a domestic VC fund.
In a press statement, Bessemer mentions that it would back early-stage founders building across AI-enabled services and SaaS, fintech, digital health, consumer brands and cybersecurity. Bessemer VP Partners Vishal Gupta and Anant Vidur Puri will continue to lead the fund.
Talking about its bullishness in the Indian startup space, the fund says, “There is a transformative opportunity underway in the country’s startup ecosystem driven by a growing young, affluent, and digitally savvy middle class; the proliferation of digital technology rails; and the emergence of the fifth largest country by GDP that is bolstered by domestic investment. These secular and macro trends have put India on track to be a trillion dollar digital economy, and have fueled a burgeoning digital SaaS market of founders building software for Indian and global markets”.
Apart from its strong unicorn portfolio of Indian companies, Bessemer also has nine portfolio companies from India, who have IPOed, most notable of them being Swiggy. “Our approach to-date has led us to investing in more than 80 startups in India, including investments from our first India fund, such as Boldfit, MoveInSync, Pepper Content, Shopdeck, Vetic, Zopper, and more”, says the fund.
Bessemer VP joins a list of both global and domestic VCs closing India-specific funds, though the list has grown more steadily compared to the 2020-2022 era. This includes more recent ones such as Prime Venture Partners ($100Mn fund), Stellaris VP ($300Mn India Fund) along with corporates such as Asia’s largest low cost airline Indigo, among others.
