Navin Honagudi, a former partner at Kae Capital, founded Elev8 Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that closed its first fund at Rs 1,400 crore, or roughly $160 million. The fund will support startups in the fintech, enterprise software, and consumer internet sectors.
The investor base consists of family offices, sovereign funds, unicorn founders, and organizations from South Korea, Hong Kong, and India. KB Investment is the anchor investor and a member of the KB Financial Group in South Korea. Capital has also been committed by the Self-Reliant India Fund.
The fund claims that roughly one-third of the corpus has already been invested. Elev8 anticipates deploying the remaining ones in the upcoming 12 to 18 months. Investing $10–15 million each in 12–14 startups with a $100–300 million valuation is its goal.
Astrotalk, Idfy, Porter, Snapmint, and Smallcase are already included in the portfolio.
A $400 million late-stage fund that supports startups headed for an IPO was also introduced by Elevation Capital last week. In January, Accel raised $650 million, and in March, Bessemer Venture Partners announced a $350 million India fund.
