Early-stage investment platform Antler India Monday announced that it has secured capital commitments worth $60 million (Rs 500 crores) for its maiden pre-seed fund, which is likely to hit a final close at $75 million (Rs 600 crores).
Antler India fund is backed by several investors including six institutional and sovereign wealth investors (including SIDBI), as well as 125+ limited partners from over a dozen unicorn founders, according to a company statement.
“The fund is significantly oversubscribed on its base corpus target, and is now completing the exercise of the greenshoe portion to reach nearly double the initial target in 2021, allowing for faster expansion, more reserve capital, and additional capabilities to support portfolio startups,” Antler stated.
The pre-seed fund has already committed to invest in 45 companies, with ticket sizes in the range of $200,000-400,000. The fun will have a bias toward sectors such as SaaS, fintech, consumer tech along with new themes like open network digital commerce, climate, web3 infrastructure, vertical SaaS, and spacetech. Nearly half of the completed investments (27) have already raised follow-on capital, the statement said.
Some of the firm’s investments include Adaptive, Apnibus, Bookee, Bold Finance, Covrzy, Gladful, Hexo, IndiaP2P, Inferless, Inspecity, OnArrival, Plotch, Sangti, StepChange, among others.
“We also look forward to partnering with our peer funds in the ecosystem in the course of investing in 100 disruptive startups via this fund. In the next 18 months, besides establishing a physical presence in additional ecosystems like Delhi NCR and Mumbai, we aim to double down on emerging themes and bring a range of capabilities for founders beyond just capital, like we have done for ONDC-Beckn with Nandan Nilekani and team,” said Nitin Sharma and Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founders and general partners at Antler in India.
Antler’s global footprint now includes 27 locations worldwide. In June 2023, the firm also announced the final close of its $285-million Antler Elevate fund to support growth-stage startups from Series A onwards.