Athera, which has also onboarded SIDBI Fund of Funds as one of its limited partners (LPs), or sponsors, will now have more than 60% of the capital for its Fund-IV coming from domestic investors.
“Over the last decade or so, most venture capital firms have relied on external capital…around five years back, SIDBI started anchoring funds, in addition to which now there is money from high networth individuals (HNIs) in the form of domestic capital. Around two decades ago China started with foreign venture capital and somewhere around 15 years back there was a shift to domestic money. It is now happening in India,” Doshi said.
In 2022, HDFC AMC launched an alternative investment fund (AIF) specifically to invest in private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) firms. In October this year, HDFC AMC’s CEO Navneet Munot said during a post-earnings analysts call that the vehicle had raised Rs 1,200 crore as of September 30.
Through this AIF, HDFC AMC is raising capital from domestic sources, including HNIs and corporates.
Discover the stories of your interest
“There is a significant shift happening in India, where such domestic institutions are becoming large sponsors of VC funds. In fact, HDFC AMC and SIDBI together have become dominant LPs for our fund, overshadowing international LPs that are also participating,” Doshi added.
HDFC AMC’s vehicle has also sponsored Inflexor Ventures’ opportunities fund, the first close of which was announced in November with a corpus of Rs 350 crore. Inflexor has invested in startups such as Atomberg and Bellatrix Aerospace.
Athera Venture Partners was a result of a split between VC firm Inventus Capital’s India and US units in 2022. Inventus India, which became Athera, had earlier backed startups such as RedBus and Policybazaar.
Athera launched its Fund-IV following the rebrand in May 2022, at a time when dealmaking had slowed down with macro headwinds hurting investments and valuations of technology companies.
Doshi said that through the Fund-IV, which will focus on investments in consumer internet, enterprise software, AI and deeptech startups, Athera has already backed six firms. These include logistics platform Clickpost, robotics startup Cynlr, autonomous EV maker Ati Motors, gaming firm Terra, AI finance startup Hyprbots, and Billion Hearts, a consumer tech startup founded by Koo cofounder Mayank Bidwatka.
The fund will focus on seed and series A deals, looking to write cheques ranging from Rs 5 to Rs 25 crore for 16-18 companies.
