India's Z3 Partners hits first close on debut VC fund

LP participation to date has been dominated by high net worth individuals. The target corpus is $100 million. Focus sectors include financial technology, e-commerce, B2B commerce, software and software-as-a-service, data analytics, and agricultural technology.

Z3 was founded in 2019 by Gautam Patel (pictured seated left), who is also a co-founder of local VC firm Zodius Capital. Patel helped set up two funds for Zodius, which went on to back local start-ups the likes of BigBasket, MedGenome, and OfBusiness. Zodius was acquired by KKR-owned Avendus Capital in 2017.

“The opportunity in tech and digital is taking leadership in India with significant smartphone (600 million), internet (700 million) and e-commerce ($150 billion in the next five years) adoption to greater government support and venture capital ($10 billion) and public equity market interest (currently $70 billion growing by another $50 billion in 24 months),” Patel said in a statement.

Z3 made its first investment in February with Cyfirma, a Singapore and Tokyo-based cybersecurity software provider also backed by Zodius that uses artificial intelligence to analyze information on the internet and on the dark web, a cryptographically secure section of the internet used to escape detection. Z3’s second investment is DealShare, a social commerce grocery start-up in India.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Fundraising
• Venture
• Technology
• India
• Z3 Partners