India's Trifecta hits $130m first close on VC fund

LPs in the first close are domestic, including corporates, family offices, insurance companies, ultra high net worth individual, and entrepreneurs. The firm is said to be in talks with global institutions to raise the balance.

Some LPs are existing investors Trifecta's debt funds. Trifecta reached a final close of $140 million for its second venture debt fund earlier this year with commitments coming from insurance companies, family offices, and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI). A debut debt fund closed on INR5 billion ($68.4 million) in 2017 with support from RBL Bank and SIDBI.

The new vehicle, Trifecta Leaders Fund I, will target local late-stage tech start-ups that are seeking liquidity events within three years, writing checks of INR1-2 billion. Target areas will include enterprise and consumer services, e-commerce, mobility, education, financial services, healthcare, and agriculture. Equity deals will be primarily sourced from the debt portfolio.

Five investments have been made under the strategy so far, although these have not been identified. Trifecta was listed among the participants in a Series C top-up for beauty retailer MyGlamm earlier this week. In recent months, it has also joined late-stage rounds for online insurance player Turtlemint and drugstore portal PharmEasy.

It extends a spate of pre-IPO fundraising in India. In recent months, Edelweiss Wealth Management has launched its third fund focused on the strategy with a target of INR50 billion, while Kotak Investment Advisors, also an investor in PharmEasy, hit a first close of INR13.9 billion on a similar vehicle.

The trend is driven by a boom in domestic IPOs and has brought in a number of investors that have not previously been active in late-stage investing. Among them is seed-stage specialist and fellow PharmEasy backer Orios Venture Partners, which raised $30 million for a pre-IPO fund in June.

Anup Jain, a managing partner at the firm, estimates $1.5 billion has been raised in Indian pre-IPO funds in the last three quarters.

"India's tech IPO story has started and is here to stay, so we can't be sitting on the fence and not betting on it," Jain told AVCJ. "As a fund manager, it's a great strategy to invest in pre-IPO companies to provide for liquidity during the mid-life of the fund while an early stage folio is chugging away in the background over fund life producing breakout companies that will be exited at the highest IRR in the end. We will certainly keep our fingers in this pie."

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Growth
• Fundraising
• India
• Trifecta
• Technology