Axilor Ventures plans for second fund worth $100 million

Axilor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital (VC) firm founded in 2014, said it plans to launch a second fund called Axilor technology fund (ATF) – 2 with a total corpus of $100 million, almost four times the size of the first fund.

The new fund will look at “emerging opportunities” in the enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS), business-to-business (B2B) commerce, agritech, consumer tech, fintech, and health tech. Its extended tenure will allow a longer stay in the companies and has a higher follow-on reserve, the company said in a statement. Axilor said it will set aside 30% of this new corpus for investing in 10-12 winners from its first fund, ATF-1.

The ATF- 1, was launched in 2018 and invested in 54 startups. It claims to have “an industry-leading follow-on rate of over 75% with 21 startups having already crossed Series A and beyond.” Its portfolio companies include Detect, Enkash, Headfone, Locofast, Loco, Medfin, Niramai, Urban Piper, Vyapar and Wiz.

“There is no better time to invest in innovation coming out of India. We are excited to partner with entrepreneurs through our new fund. We have built a well-respected brand among founders and VCs. With our first fund, we have demonstrated our deep engagement model and a programmatic approach that predictably delivers better outcomes for startups,” said Ganapathy Venugopal, co-founder and CEO.

The VC firm was founded and backed by Indian tech pioneers like Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, Tarun Khanna, Srinath Batni and Ganapathy Venugopal.