Unilever Ventures — the venture capital arm of consumer goods giant Unilever, has announced an investment of ₹65 crore ($10 million) in venture capital firm IDG Ventures India.
Previously, Unilever Ventures and IDG Ventures India formed a partnership along with Amazon Internet Services in order to start an Innovation Program. It aimed to jointly invest in startups operating in consumer technology, software, health-tech, fin-tech, etc.
The Innovation Program aims to invest between $500,000 and $5 million in startups looking to raise seed or Series A rounds. Now, as per the people aware of the matter, Unilever Ventures is currently evaluating startups to fund as a part of the Innovation Program. Along with that, it is also looking to fund startups directly.
At the time of announcing Innovation Program, Sudhir Sethi, founder and Chairman, IDG Ventures India, had said that the 2017 edition expects to reach out to over 1,000 companies in the next 2 months and partner with/invest in select startups.
In a regulatory filing with the Registrar of Companies, Unilever Ventures said that the investment in IDG will help them to evaluate more deals.
For IDG Ventures India, the invest comes after it closed its third fund in March this year. The VC firm met its targeted corpus of $200 million (around ₹1,332 crore) for the third fund.
IDG Ventures India, which is a part of IDG Ventures — a global network of investors, typically invests between $500,000 and $10 million in startups. Its portfolio consists of about 65 companies including Flipkart, Lenskart, Uniphore and Zivame, among others.