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Dallas Venture Capital (DVC) announced the first close of its India fund at Rs 100 crore from friends, family and team.

The fund will look to close its Rs 350 crore fund in the next six months, a senior executive told YourStory.

The Rupee fund was announced in May last year. Since then, it has backed five companies in the enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) space including video SaaS platform Hippo Video, infrastructure monitoring entity Vunet, cybersecurity company BluSapphire, enterprise learning platform Disprz, and anti-money laundering company IntelleWings. 

“We plan on backing around 16 companies during our four-year deployment cycle of the fund. We are in talks with institutional investors, larger private capital players and high net worth individuals in India for the final close,” Co-founder and Director Abidali Neemuchwala told YourStory. 

Nearly 10% of the commitment in the first close came from the team, he added. 

With nearly $110 million to $120 million of Asset under Management (AUM) across its $80 million US-focused fund, SPV and other investments, Dallas Venture Capital will continue to write cheques of $2 million to $5 million across Series A and Series B for SaaS companies based in India. 

“Enterprises are still very early in their digital transformation journeys. There are a lot of opportunities for interesting vertical use cases to leverage deep technology to be able to provide digital transformation solutions to enterprises,” he said.

Abidali Neemuchwala joined DVC in September 2020 after serving as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the IT services firm Wipro. 

Enterprises would continue to rely on startups for digital transformation despite the slowdown in decision-making for signing up business-to-business SaaS solutions, said Abidali. DVC invests in startups with average revenue of $1 million, with clear product-market fit, he shared.

On Friday, DVC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Telangana-backed accelerator T-Hub to mentor startups based out of Hyderabad.