Blog

Early-stage venture capital firm Arkam Ventures has announced its Fund II with a target corpus of $180 million to back technology-focused startups. The fund will tap into top-tier global institutional investors and family offices for investments, as per a statement issued by the firm.  

The firm’s first fund includes British International Investment, SIDBI, Evolvence, Quilvest, and others as limited partners. 

Arkam Ventures was founded in 2020 by former Co-founder and Managing Director at Helion Venture Partners, Rahul Chandra, and former Partner at Kalaari Capital, Bala Srinivasa. In April 2022, it announced the final close of its $106 million Fund I, which has backed 16 startups including fintech startups Jar and KreditBee, food and agritech companies Jai Kisan and Jumbotail, skilling companies Smartstaff and CUSMAT, as well as SaaS startups SpotDraft and Signzy. 

Fund II will continue to focus on ‘middle India opportunity’ and aims to build tech solutions for the next 400 million Indians driven by digitisation. The new fund will back a portfolio of 20 startups in existing sectors as well as new sectors, including manufacturing technology and electric vehicles. 

“As a team with 20 years of venture investing experience in India, we believe that the defining themes for the next decade will be the untapped Middle India market, rapid scale, and capital efficiency,” said Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam, in a statement.

He added, “Arkam’s “foundation-first” approach helps portfolio companies create sustainable businesses with the right governance, organisational design and go-to-market strategies.”

With the new fund, Arkam will back startups across Series A and Series B stages. It will also deploy capital in strong portfolio companies for follow-on rounds. The fund will also bolster its portfolio advisory function focused on organisational design, go-to-market (GTM) strategy, finance and operations, said the statement.