Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm, today announced that it has closed its third fund at ₹400 crore ($60 million).
The money was raised fully from international investors, according to Amit Somani, Managing Partner, though there was interest from domestic investors.
According to Somani, Prime will continue to focus on ventures in digital, fintech and financial services, healthcare, education, logistics and global SaaS solutions.
Founded in 2011, Prime raised its first fund of $8 million in 2012 and second fund of $46 million in 2015. The second fund has been fully committed. The VC firm has made 19 investments so far and has had one exit, when ZipDial, a missed call-based start-up it had funded, was acquired by Twitter in 2015.
According to Somani, the fund was raised with investors from the US, Singapore and Hong Kong. There were a few new investors in the third fund. “The investors were bullish about both Prime and India,” he said.
Prime is typically the first institutional investor in any venture, writing cheques of ₹5-10 crore ($750,000-1.5 million), with follow-on investment in the Series A round for a pro-rata stake.
The VC firm makes three to five investments in a year, preferring to spend time with the start-ups and their founders in helping build the business.
Most of Prime's portfolio companies are focussed on the growing domestic opportunity. It also has companies that target the US, West Asia and other international markets, or those that initially start in India and expand to other geographies.
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