Speciale Invest raises Rs 120 cr fund for new startups

New Delhi: Speciale Invest, a seed-stage venture capital firm investing in deep technologies, on Friday said it has raised Rs 120 crore as part of its Rs 140 crore-Speciale Invest Continuity Fund I.

Speciale Invest Continuity Fund I is the second fund raised by Speciale Invest. Speciale had raised its first fund of $10 million (over Rs 60 crore) in 2018, and has invested in 14 startups so far, with an average deal size of sub-USD 500,000. "We had aimed for the second fund to be around Rs 100 crore but this got oversubscribed, closed over Rs 120 crore in the second fund, and soon will reach the target of Rs 140 crore," the company said in an emailed response.

The second fund has been backed by an experienced group of domestic investors, it added. "The fund expects to invest in about 18-20 startups building enterprise software products including SaaS (software as a service), developers' tools and frontier technologies including space-tech, robotics, photonics and alternative energy among others. "We have a few more deals to go through in the next quarters, and capital reserved for follow-on funding in our current investee companies," the company said.

The investment strategy and portfolio construct continues to remain the same across funds, and a larger corpus allows for more follow-on allocation to the portfolio, it said. "We are excited to announce the launch of our second fund to support and boost the deep-tech startup ecosystem in India amid the ongoing pandemic."

"The oversubscribed round of funding and interest in our subsequent round demonstrate the support of our investors in our team in creating a long standing venture institution," Vishesh Rajaram, Managing Partner at Speciale Invest, said. Portfolio companies of Speciale Invest include enterprise software companies Wingman, True Lark, TotalCloud, Scapic, iAuro, Pocket52 and; and hardware startups The ePlane Company, Agnikul, Astrogate Labs, CynLr, and Kawa Space.