Bengaluru-based early-stage India-focused VC fund, Prime Venture Partners, on Thursday announced the final close of its fourth fund (Fund IV) at $120 million (Rs 900 crore).
In addition to existing investors, Fund IV is backed by International Finance Corporation (IFC) — part of the World Bank Group), a top-tier university endowment, a top-tier Fund of Funds, and several global technology entrepreneurs, according to a statement.
As per the statement, the fund was oversubscribed and has exceeded its target of $100 million in commitments and the capital will be used to invest in disruptive technology companies across fintech, edtech, healthtech, consumer internet, and global SaaS.
In addition to prior focus areas, the firm said it has expanded its portfolio into new areas, notably, EVs, B2B, Web3 and Gaming infrastructure platforms.
Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, said,
“With Fund IV, Prime VP is well-positioned to back a new group of category-defining technology startups and inspiring entrepreneurs in India. Fund IV is already off to an exciting start and we couldn’t be more optimistic about the depth of the entrepreneurial talent and increasing level of ambition among the founders in India.”
With this closing, the new fund takes the total capital under management across all Prime VP funds to over $250 million.
According to the firm, more than 90 percent of companies backed by Prime VP at the seed stage go on to raise follow-on capital led by investors in India and globally within 18 months and achieve strong product market fit, follow-on rounds, profitability or exits with meaningful outcomes to founders.
Funds I to III are committed across 32 companies spanning sectors such as fintech, healthcare, SaaS, education and logistics. Its fintech portfolio include Niyo, a savings-led universal neobank with several million users, Ezetap, a POS acceptance platform with more than 400,000 merchant outlets, Freo (Moneytap), the consumer-credit-led Neobank, KredX, the invoice discounting platform, OTO, the two-wheeler leasing solution and many others.
Additionally, during the past 12 months, three of Prime’s early fintech investments were acquired by marquee brands. These include the acquisition of business expense, payments and travel management platform Happay by Cred for $180 million, financial operations startup Recko by Stripe, and retail-technology startup Perpule by Amazon.
Other notable investments by Prime include Quizizz, an edtech platform used by more than 100 million students in 120 countries, PlanetSpark, a communication skills platform, Sunstone, an innovator in new-age MBA programs, MFine, a telemedicine and home diagnostics provider, , a startup in (gated) community operating systems, Dozee, a pioneer in remote patient monitoring solutions, WheelsEye, an inter-city truck logistics company, Bolt, an EV charging network and many others.
Prime also has a portfolio of SaaS startups including Zuper, provider of intelligent field service management software and SurveySparrow in the customer experience management space.
Prime VP’s Fund I recently claims to have delivered a 4x+ return to all its Limited Partners.
Led by Amit Somani, Sanjay Swamy and Shripati Acharya, Prime’s partners actively work with the founders on organization design, team building, product reviews, go-to-market planning, metrics definition, and tracking, PR and finance support, future fundraising, and exit planning.
