Bengaluru-headquartered venture capital firm Season Two Ventures (S2) is in advanced stages of discussions to invest in 12 startups in the next one year from its first $100 million fund. Following which, the firm would look at raising a second fund of about $350-400 million.

S2 will invest in $500,000-5 million in various business-to-business (B2B) startups with one investment per month.

The firm is in talks with a number of startups in Banking and Finance Services and Insurance, healthcare, retail and logistics and energy and sustainability space, its Managing Partner Sajan Pillai told BusinessLine .

“I believe that venture funds have a long-term spectrum of 5-7 years with respect to planning and hence, the short terms issues do not matter when it comes to fund performance. At S2, we evaluate how will our investments perform in the long run, and the current pandemic does not impact our decisions,” he said.

The firm is making an undisclosed seed round of funding in Bengaluru-based Warehouse Now, a warehousing startup, which is expected to announce this week. Warehouse Now, which has presence in about 100 cities, will use the funds to scale up operations.

S2, an Indo-US corridor VC firm, has also made six early-stage investments in India, including in payment startup Uvik, air pollution monitor firm Ambee, personal data management company Ozone.ai, committing a total of $15-20 million.

Second fund in 18 months

S2 will raise its next fund in the next 18 months, after exhausting the present $100 million fund.

“This would be around $350-$400 million with a focus on B2B start-ups as the first one. We believe that even with the first fund, we are only scratching the surface. There is a tremendous amount of growth potential,” Pillai said.

“One of the largest sources of exit comes from customers themselves. The second category of exits is major buyers such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Salesforce, and finally, the future rounds and IPO are other potential exits,” he added.

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