Stellaris reaches $50m first close on India VC fund

LPs include domestic IT and business consulting giant Infosys, which committed $4.6 million. Stellaris has also received capital from a founder network of about 50 Indian entrepreneurs, executives and fund managers, such as Taxiforsure co-founder Aprameya R. and Kanwaljit Singh, a Helion co-founder who departed in 2014 to establish Fireside Ventures.

The close was first reported by Live Mint and has since been confirmed by AVCJ. Alok Chowdhri, who established Stellaris alongside fellow ex-Helion executives Alok Goyal and Ritesh Banglani, told Live Mint that the founder network is intended to capitalize on the relatively new trend of founders going to successful entrepreneurs or business executives in order to raise their first round of funding. “These entrepreneurs and executives have the best possible deal-flow in the country,” he said.

Stellaris aims to back entrepreneurs building applications for global businesses, Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and consumers in verticals such as financial services, retail, healthcare and education. Infosys sees the firm as a proxy for growth in areas such as cloud computing, the internet of things, artificial intelligence and big data.

There have already been two Series A investments, including Wydr, a marketplace through which distributors or wholesalers can transact with retailers. The company was set up by Devesh Rai, who was part of the founding team at ShopClues, where he was responsible for building the company’s merchant network.

Venture capital fundraising in India reached $2.17 billion in 2016 with nearly 30 vehicles achieving full or partial closes. It is only the second year the total has topped $2 billion after reaching $2.22 billion in 2015. However, the bulk of fundraising remains concentrated among a relatively small number of GPs, with Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners receiving more than 60% of commitments made last year.

"If you look at the VC firms started in 2005, it is still virtually the same ones, especially in the Series A space. In the seed space there is more activity, and then for Series B and C there isn't really anyone," Chowdhri told AVCJ last November. "The industry is only 10 years old and few people were convinced in 2005. Local capital was always a scarce resource, but now there is capital available."

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Venture
• Fundraising
• GPs
• Technology
• Stellaris Venture Partners
• India
• TMT