Not content with investing in 19 companies over the past seven years, of which many were hits, serial investor Rehan Yar Khan is setting up a ₹300-500 crore fund. For the 42-year-old, who has been a investing in companies in his individual capacity, this is his first formal fund.

The new fund — Orios Venture Partners — will be launched within the next 60 days and will invest mainly in Indian software product companies. The fund will be registered with SEBI under the Alternative Investment Funds Category-I.

“This is to largely continue what I have been doing, investing in software product companies and helping them foray into foreign markets. The domestic fund will be largely raised from friends and family, and high net worth individuals,” Khan told Business Line .

Corpus allocation A majority of the total corpus will be set aside for later stage funding (series ‘A’ and ‘B’), while about 10-15 per cent will be reserved towards seed funding. Seed funding is early stage investment to provide financial support to businesses till they can generate cash on their own.

“While we are not restricting to any segment, we see analytics, Big Data, software for mobile phones and new platforms to be promising,” Khan said on technologies that would excite Orios Venture Partners.

Over the past seven years, Rehan Yar Khan invested in 19 companies including Pune-based enterprise start-up Druva, Ola Cabs, Sapience, Jigsee (acquired by VuClip) and Unbxd. Pretty Secrets, DocSuggest, IndiaCollegeSearch and Snapion are other companies where investments were made.

“Of these 15 were hits (moved on to raise further funds or are doing well). I have had a good run, most of my companies are showing 10x (10 times) gains on an average as the portfolio of companies was well selected,” Khan added. The angel investor had also made a number of secondary exits (selling to other funds, other investors) during his seven-year tenure.

Hiring professionals Khan, who will lead the fund in his capacity as managing partner and founder, will also hire a team of 8-10 professionals. Orios Venture Partners intends to stay invested for seven years or more, and will opt for strategic sale or initial public offerings as preferred exit modes.

In a bid to avoid conflict of interest, Khan has also resigned from all board positions in companies he had invested in. He has been a director, adviser or observer on the board of many companies.

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