Antler India, an early-stage investment firm, has closed half of its initial fund of Rs 600 crore ($75 million) and intends to close the remaining half this quarter.
The Small Industries Development Bank of India and other domestic capital sources have contributed more than Rs 325 crore of the total amount raised. Additional investors in the fund included international limited partners of Antler, government agencies, and healthcare endowments.
Antler claims that it will continue to invest $200k to $400k in new portfolio companies in software-as-a-service, fintech, generative AI, and startups based on established network protocols like the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).
The fund will reserve a portion of the corpus to double down on top portfolio performers, and it plans to support close to 100 early-stage startups from the idea to pre-seed stage.
Antler India reported that it had already made 27 investments totaling 20% of the total corpus from its first fund, including Bold Finance, Covrzy, and Hexo. 13 of these, according to Antler, have raised additional funding.
The third fund of the Japanese venture capital firm Incubate Fund Asia, with a target corpus of $50 million, recently announced its first close. In fact, Vertex Ventures, Kae Capital, Artha Group, and private equity firm Xponentia were among the four startup funds that were launched last week.
