StartupXseed Ventures, an early-stage B2B venture capital firm that invests in seed to pre-series A fundraising rounds, has announced the full closing of its Fund II at Rs 243 crore commitment—20% higher than originally intended.
“Having expertise in the B2B segment, we have helped founders to gain commendable success and our average markup of past investments is more than 6X. A couple of Fund II LPs doubled their commitment at the final close after witnessing similar growth indicators on the Fund II portfolio.” BV Naidu, Managing Partner at StartupXseed, said.
Founded by BV Naidu (Former Director STPI) along with Mohandas Pai (through Aarin Capital), Ramakrishna V, and Ravi Thakur, the VC firm is the investment manager of “Aaruha Technology Fund I and II” registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) as Category I—under Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) Regulations 2012.
StartupXseed to invest in Deeptech to Spacetech startups
StartupXseed is a sector-agnostic fund with investments in deeptech, B2B, SaaS to spacetech, including the areas of cybersecurity, semiconductors, AI/ML, drones, and new frontier startups in India, with a focus on global markets.
As part of its “Co-Founder Program”, it helps startups build sustainable businesses by providing strategic support through market access, mentorship, corporate governance, and follow-on investor connect.
Ravi Thakur, Co-founding Partner of the fund, said, “On the investments, we primarily look at solutions where the convergence of new business models and technologies is imperative. This way, we are helping ourselves in working on the next big verticals ahead of the curve. We are also spending time helping founders double to triple their topline year on year.”
Besides the existing GPs (BV Naidu, Ravi Thakur, Sid Mookerji, Ramakrishna V, Mohan Das Pai and V Balakrishnan) for Fund II, StartupXseed added Dr Krishna Mikkilineni, ex-CTO and Board Member of Honeywell Inc, as a GP.
StartupXseed is seeking startups that have made significant technological advancements in fields such as brownfield project cloud migration, AI-led workflow automation, energy storage technologies for quick discharge applications, cybersecurity for APIs, AI-led ecommerce enablers, and other disruptive technologies in their respective markets.
Aside from leading family offices and corporations, investors in Fund I also contributed to the fund, according to the official announcement.
Between Rs 5 and 12 crore will typically be the magnitude of the initial check.
StartupXseed has known to be an early backer in startups including DarwinBox, CloudSEK, Bellatrix, and AUS (Aarav Unmanned Systems), holding an estimated 100X investment value in DarwinBox, which became a unicorn this year.
