Prime Venture Partners raises Rs400 crore for its third fund

Bengaluru: Prime Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital (VC) firm based out of Bengaluru, on Wednesday announced the close of the third fund worth Rs400 crore (around $60 million). With the fresh funds, the VC firm will focus on investing in sectors like online financial services, healthcare, education, logistics and enterprise software.

Founded in 2011, Prime Venture closed its first fund in 2012 with a corpus of $8 million; its second fund was closed in 2015 when it raised $46 million. The fund invests in 3-5 technology companies every year. One of its earlier portfolio company ZipDial, a mobile marketing firm, was acquired by Twitter in 2015.

The VC firm is jointly managed by Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya and Amit Somani along with partner emeritus Raj Mashruwala.

According to Sanjay Swamy, co-founder and managing partner of Prime Venture, its second fund of $46 million was largely focused on the financial services sector. Last year, the firm invested in five start-ups, out of which four were in the financial services segment.

“We have committed almost all of the money from the second fund, and a part of the cash is reserved for future re-investment into existing portfolio companies,” Swamy added. The fund usually invests a part of the overall investment into a company as seed money, while the rest of the investment is released in a different batch.

In 2017, Prime Ventures invested in online lending firm MoneyTap, digital payments startup Ezetap, B2B software provider Synup, and online skill assessment portal HackerEarth, and fintech start-up NiYO solutions.

In the healthcare segment, the firm has investments in Delhi-based AffordPlan, a fintech start-up which helps patients to find affordable healthcare around them, and Maya, which focuses on women’s reproductive health.

Prime Venture’s portfolio companies are mostly product start-ups with strong tech teams. Although a majority of Prime’s portfolio companies are based out of India, the VC firm said in a statement that it plans to expand into other geographies like the US, Middle East, and other overseas markets.

“Digital India is exploding; there has never been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur in India. We are privileged to partner with amazing entrepreneurs who are building some of the most exciting emerging companies in India. We are also grateful for the fantastic support from our existing limited partners (LPs) and delighted to welcome some amazing new long-term LPs to our journey,” said Swamy in a statement.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.