Artha Venture Fund has marked the first close of its maiden fund, Artha Venture Fund I, at ₹40 crores ($6 million). Artha India Venture had received the approval from Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in March this year.
The Artha Venture Fund, which has a corpus target of ₹200 crores will see its final close in the next six to twelve months. It was founded by Anirudh A Damani, who has invested in startups like OYO Rooms, Exotel, Fynd, Tala etc. The Fund is backed by Singularity Holdings, Artha India Ventures, Ashok Kumar Damani, Madhusudan Kela and Ramesh M Damani. The only known investment by the fund was in LenDenClub, a P2P lending platform.
Anirudh A Damani said, “LenDenClub is going to be a really good investment for us as I firmly believe that LenDen is at the right place, at the right time and I am certain that it will turn out to be a big winner for Artha Venture Fund.”
Artha Venture Fund is looking for startups with innovative and disruptive business models as told by Anirudh A Damani. The startups need to have an experienced team capable of executing their plans with high growth potential to receive investment from the fund. The startups funded by Artha Venture will also receive its help in other domains such as marketing, training, finance, etc.
The fund is planning to make 8-10 new seed investment every year, it is in the process of completing around four investments by September this year.
There has been a slump in the seed funding for startups in this year by 30%, compared to last year. Now there are many startups in the field of AI, fintech, big data and other emerging sectors. This will provide a good hunting ground for the fund to scout for startups that meet their criteria for investment.