The Investment Trust of India (ITI) group‘s early-stage debut venture capital fund, named ITI Growth Opportunites Venture Fund, has marked its first close at ₹30 crore, with entire amount coming as sponsor commitment coming from ITI group.
The target for the fund is set ₹150 crore, which includes a greenshoe option of ₹50 crore.
Sudhir Valia-backed ITI group is a financial services group, which provides equity and derivatives trading, equity and commodity market research, portfolio management services, mutual fund and insurance product distribution, and investment banking.
The firm will be targetting a mix of high net-worth individuals, select corporates and marquee Indian professionals working overseas for the fundraising. While ITI group has made a soft commitment for the entire ₹100 crore, in case, it fails to get enough external investors.
According to Mohit Gulati, Managing General Partner at ITI group, the firm expects to hit the final close of the fund in the next 12 months.
The fund will be investing in early-stage startups across seed and pre-Series A stages, while also selectively co-investing in series A transactions. It will look to invest across sectors like healthtech, fintech, retail, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
Mohit Gulati, said, “We will invest in around 20-24 startups with a with a median ticket size of $0.5 million,”
He further added, “The fund is also structured such that we won’t be charging any upfront management fee from investors. The fee will be realized by the firm out of the carry generated from successful exits that we deliver.”
Indian startup ecosystem has been attracting a lot of investment and with the latest jump in India’s ease of doing business ranking to 77th spot, the confidence among the investors is expected to increase further.
Recently, Sixth Sense Ventures closes its second fund at ₹500 crore, doubling its initial corpus. It was also reported that, Tiger Global Management is in talks with two Indian startups, to make fresh investments from its new $3.75 billion fund.