Global venture capital firm Accel has announced a $650 million fund to back early-stage start-ups across India and Southeast Asia, taking the total commitment in the region to over $2 billion. Accel is known for backing Freshworks, Flipkart, Swiggy, UrbanCompany and Vedantu among others.

“India currently has 200 million digitally transacting consumers, a number that is expected to grow to 500 million in the next five years. As we look towards the next decade, we expect digital adoption in India and Southeast Asia to only accelerate. We see this trend playing out not only in categories like financial services and e-commerce, but also across core sectors like agriculture, education, insurance, logistics, healthcare, real estate, and manufacturing,” the company said in a statement.

“And, of course, there is no shortage of aspiring entrepreneurs focused on enterprise technology and Web 3. We see India gaining increasing share on the global stage in both areas,” Accel added.

Future plans

Known for being an early investor of Facebook, this fund is the second highest ever raised by an VC firm for the India and Southeast Asia region. Sequoia India had raised the highest fund of $1.35 billion in 2020 to invest in opportunities in India and Southeast Asia.

“In India and Southeast Asia, we are the first institutional investor in over 85 per cent of our investments, and 95 per cent of our investments are Seed or Series A. We continue to expand our commitment to start-up founders and entrepreneurs in India through programs such as SeedToScale and Atoms,” Accel said on its plans ahead.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW