Matrix Partners India III, which is the new fund of Matrix Partners India, is understood to have raised $300 million (~ Rs 2,100 crore), according to a ‘Form D’ filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dated August 14. Form D is used to file a notice of an exempt offering of securities with the SEC. It is a brief notice that includes basic information about the company and the offering, such as the names and addresses of the company’s executive officers, the size of the offering and the date of first sale.
Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with Rs 4,500 crore under management. Founded in 2006 by Avnish Bajaj and Rishi Navani, the firm invests in multiple stage companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market. Rishi Navani however quit Matrix Partner later to launch Epiq Capital.
Notably, the firm has recently invested in &ME, a Bengaluru-based food and beverage brand, focused on women’s health and wellness. Prior to this, it led the $1 million investment in Elemential Labs, a Mumbai-based blockchain administration platform touted as WordPress-for-Blockchain Solutions, in April this year. IN March this year, Delhi-based SaaS startup Anaek, which develops chatbots, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Matrix Partners India.
Erlier this week too, Matrix Partners announced that it has co-invested in Vogo, a scooter-sharing platform for short haul commute. Vogo is a dockless scooter rental company which lets customers rent scooters for short one-way trips at various locations across the city. The company is currently present in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and plans to add over 1,000 pick-up points across the two cities in the coming year.
Few notable investments of Matrix India include companies such as Ola, Quikr, Practo, Dailyhunt, Treebo, Mswipe, Five Star Business Finance, Razorpay, OfBusiness, CreditVidya and ZipLoan, among others.
Sanjot Malhi, vice-president, Matrix India, said in a statement to Financial Express that Matrix Partners sees a lot of potential in &ME being able to become a large F&B brand. “More broadly, we are excited about investing in, and partnering with more home-grown consumer brands across the spectrum,” he said.
Last month, two former managing directors of Sequoia Capital’s India unit have teamed up to launch a new Rs 2,000 crore investment firm, which will back early- to growth-stage private companies
According to a Grant Thornton report, H1 of 2018 was dominated by investments in the start-up sector, which contributed to 58% of total investment volumes garnering $1.8 billion. This is in line with the trends in the last seven years. Fintech attracted significant attention from investors with 52 deals, followed by healthtech, retail and enterprise solutions segments.
H1 witnessed a majority of the PE players cashing out their investments completely from their portfolio companies. A notable exit was witnessed in the e-commerce sector with the Walmart-Flipkart deal marking the largest PE exit in the period. Real estate, auto, IT, banking and energy sectors also saw top exits this year.
Every Venture Is Not About Capital !
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An engineer by education and writer by profession, Suman keeps tab on startup ecosystem of India and leads the research team of IndiaWeb2 for covering funding deals, merger & acquisition and market reports.
Source: IndianWeb2
