India Quotient Closes $64 Mn For Its Fourth Fund The fourth fund was launched in February 2021 with an aim to build a corpus of $80 million from domestic and global allocations
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Early-stage venture capital fund India Quotient on Tuesday announced that it has raised $64 million for its fourth fund. This comes after the duo of Madhukar Sinha and Anand Lunia have completed five successful career investment cycles to date.
The fourth fund was launched in February 2021 with an aim to build a corpus of $80 million from domestic and global allocations. The domestic leg was hugely oversubscribed and the fund is in discussions with global investors for the rest of the money.
"We will continue to push the boundaries in early-stage investing and take positions in things that are not waves yet and spaces that are not sectors yet. While everyone has been talking about investing in returning founders, we feel that great innovation sometimes needs freshers, youngsters, and first-time entrepreneurs. We are in the business of investing in exceptions and outliers and we will not fall into lazy pattern matching. A small fund allows us to focus on concept stage investments and also allows us to aim for high fund multiples. Our investors know how we operate and have given us a long rope. We like to keep our investor base small to have a meaningful relationship with each of them," said Anand Lunia, founding partner, India Quotient.
The fund has been raised from top family offices and other institutional investors in India. The paper stage investor is well known for backing challenger startups like ShareChat (now a unicorn), Sugar Cosmetics, Lendingkart, PagarBook and has backed more than 80earlystage startups over the last 8 years. The fund has returned the principal investment on its previous schemes to investors, an important benchmark.
"Today, Indian families and HNIs are directly engaging with VC firms, a great sign of wealth creation within India in times to come. Hitherto all gains made by startups were going only to overseas investors. Many of our investors have made direct investments in companies like Sharechat, Sugar, Lendingkartetc and we clearly see the increasing sophistication they now have in managing their startup portfolios," Lunia further remarked.
India Quotient also welcomed Gagan Goyal, an ex-entrepreneur and IIT Bombay Alumnus, as a general partner in the team along with Anand Lunia and Madhukar Sinha.
"We look forward to investing in startups that are not merely copycats of global companies but have a unique concept and a real potential to scale. We have noticed that entrepreneurs today are looking for more than investors. They want partners who are committed long and deep, a value that India Quotient has upheld since day 1. It was this mindset that we are here to serve founders that led me to join the team as we move forward to work with innovative entrepreneurs who will set the course for the future of our country," added Gagan Goyal, general partner, India Quotient.
India Quotient is sector agnostic and has invested in fntech, edtech, healthtech, SaaS, social networks, agritech, and consumer tech. In addition to being the first investor when there is no proof of performance or prospects, India Quotient also brings with it the strength of its network of successful founders, mentors, and access to follow-on capital. India Quotient typically gives out the first cheque for a startup backing them with funds from $250,000-1.25 million.
