India's Avataar hires partner from Alpha Wave Global
Avataar Venture Partners, an India-based investor in growth-stage B2B technology and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, has recruited Anirudh Singh from Alpha Wave Global as a partner.
Singh joined Alpha Wave – formerly Falcon Edge Capital – in 2020 and latterly served as head of Alpha Wave Incubation. He participated in investments across India and Southeast Asia in the likes of Absolute Foods, Foxy, Classplus, Cuemath, Policybazaar, Fanclash, 100ms, and Momos.
Prior to Alpha Wave, Singh worked for Canaan Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and B Capital Group. At Norwest, he worked alongside Mohan Kumar, Avataar’s co-founder and managing partner.
Singh becomes the firm’s third partner, alongside Kumar and Nishant Rao, the other founder. He will be responsible for growth-stage B2B investments alongside Kumar and Rao.
“Avataar is built to last for a few decades and part of the plan was to, at every point, have new partners or new skill strengths they bring in. This was actually part of the original plan. We planned to have a third partner by the time we were in the second fund,” Kumar told the Economic Times.
Avataar reached a first close of USD 130m on Fund II last October against an overall target of USD 350m. Fund I was supported by HarbourVest Partners, which provided USD 300m so that Kumar could acquire six assets from Norwest’s India portfolio and make some new and follow-on investments. Two years later, in 2021, Avataar raised a top-up fund of USD 100m.
Kumar’s objective with Avataar was to fill a perceived gap in the growth-stage B2B and SaaS space, and then to offer a degree of operational support. To that end, he brought in Rao, formerly COO of SaaS giant Freshworks. There are also dedicated operating partners.
The firm constructs deliberately concentrated portfolios of only about a dozen companies per fund. It writes equity cheques of USD 10m-USD 50m for businesses with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of USD 10m-USD 30m and looks to help them scale beyond USD 100m.
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