Merak Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, has launched a new fund with a target corpus of $100 million to invest in 18-20 Indian startups over the next three-four years, it said in a press statement.
While the fund will remain sector-agnostic, some investment themes it will proactively chase include climatetech (encompassing agritech, mobility, carbon, climate finance and digital solutions), insurTech and enterprise SaaS, Merak said.
Merak founders Manu Rikhye and Sheetal Bahl have been investing in the Indian ecosystem for a decade now, of which the last six have been sharply focused on B2B and deep/emerging tech. Their fund, called growx Ventures Fund I, which they continue to manage, has had a portfolio of 16 investments, including companies such as Cynlr, Pixxel and Progcap.
Merak counts Abraham Thomas, founder of Quandl, a data company that was acquired by NASDAQ; Sheetal Ranganathan, chief strategy officer for Roche, India; and Soumitra Mishra, co-founder at Claro Energy, as its venture partners.
Recently, there has been a rise in investors foraying into small-ticket transactions. Most recently, Tiger Global led a $15-million funding round in fintech startup Jodo, its 12th early-stage bet in 2022, a threefold jump from last year, according to reports.
Merak’s new fund launch announcement comes at a time global funds, including Sequoia, Accel, LightSpeed and Matrix Partners, have either raised new funds or are in talks to raise capital to tap tech investment opportunities in India.