Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
money

Naresh Malhotra, the former CEO of the Cafe Coffee Day, has reportedly floated a new early-stage venture capital fund, with a corpus of ₹50 crore. The firm has onboarded Monika Rao, who is the co-founder of Family Doctor, and Mukund Rao, the founder of DerivIT, as the lead investors in the fund.

Commenting on this, Naresh Malhotra said,

We are looking at early-stage startups, could be 6 months to 12 months, or older by one to two years. It can be a product or services company, but our focus would be on helping them scale up.

The fund will be focusing on early-stage tech startups working in the space of upcoming technologies such as artificial intelligence. The ticket size for the investment will range from ₹1-3 crore. It is also looking forward to co-invest along with other Private Equity funds.

Monika Rao, who lead the funding round in the firm, said,

We are open to investing in Indian startups that are incorporated in Singapore as well. We are also looking at startups in India that can cater to other Southeast Asian markets similar to India in some ways, but have a higher per capita revenue generation like Indonesia.

After a slowdown in startup funding, the investment in early-stage startups is now gaining momentum. Family offices are now becoming an important source of capital for private companies, either as a standalone funding source or in a complementary partnership with other investors or VCs.

By Jeet