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Venture capital firm Accel has successfully raised $650 million for its eighth India fund, which saw participation from 131 undisclosed investors.

In 2022, Accel announced its seventh India fund, which also secured $650 million.

Accel is a global VC firm that partners with startups across various stages, from seed to growth. It has offices in Palo Alto, California; San Francisco; London, and India. The firm has invested in over 300 companies, including notable names such as Facebook, Slack, and Dropbox.

Since establishing its India office in 2008, Accel has backed various startups, some of which have gone on to become unicorns, including Flipkart, Urban Company, and Acko.

Recently, in Swiggy’s IPO, Accel tendered 10.5 million shares in the offer for sale (OFS), realising a return of 3391% based on its acquisition cost of Rs 11.17 per share. This return was calculated considering the sale of shares at the upper end of the IPO price range, Rs 390, which brought Accel Rs 412 crore from the sale.

Most recently, Accel backed FirstClub, a startup by former Flipkart executive Ayyappan R, which raised $8 million in seed funding. Before that, it had invested in Simplismart, an end-to-end MLOps (machine learning pperations) platform for generative AI models.

According to Tracxn’s ‘Geo Annual Report – India Tech – 2024’, India was the third-highest recipient of funding, following the United States and the United Kingdom. While the total funding in 2024 rose 6% from the funding in 2023, it was 56% lower than the funding in 2022.

Late-stage funding experienced a year-on-year growth of 12.09%, reaching $7.13 billion, while early-stage funding saw a slight increase of 2.09%, bringing the total to $3.16 billion.