Grayscale Ventures Raises Initial Funding of $20 Million for Pre-Seed SaaS-Focused Fund
- ByStartupStory | February 27, 2023
The 10-year term fund, established by Siddharth Verma and Nikhil Kapur, aims to invest in 15-20 startups at the pre-seed stage. The fund has already made investments in a couple of startups, such as Olvy, which offers a cloud-based feedback SaaS platform, and Localwell, a mobile SaaS startup catering to pharmaceutical retailers in India.
Grayscale Ventures typically focuses on investing in startups that have a product in some stage of development, but not necessarily at the product-market-fit stage. However, Siddharth Verma notes that the fund may occasionally consider investing in pre-product stage companies as well.
The fund has attracted limited partners (LPs) from various parts of the world, such as India, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries. Most of the LPs are founders and operators of firms like Zendesk, Hasura, Slack, GlobalWay, Nexus Venture Partners, and STRIVE.
Siddharth Verma mentioned that in the beginning of 2022, the fund began engaging with potential limited partners (LPs). The LPs were intrigued by the prospect of investing in sectors with significant growth potential, which could potentially give rise to the next generation of sizable enterprises.
Siddharth Verma and Nikhil Kapur crossed paths while working at STRIVE, a venture capital firm located in Tokyo, where they assisted in deploying segments of Fund II and Fund III in India and Southeast Asia. Collaboratively, they have invested in approximately 25-28 business-to-business startups.
Having gained confidence from their investments at STRIVE, Siddharth Verma and Nikhil Kapur decided to create a fund that concentrates on the Indian SaaS sector. They invested between $18 million and $20 million in the previous six years, and the investments have generated a 7X MOIC (multiple on invested capital) in India and Southeast Asia, which boosted their confidence in starting their own fund.
Grayscale Ventures anticipates that the forthcoming wave of SaaS firms will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and diverge from the present systems of records or engagement models. Furthermore, the fund believes that SaaS companies that are designed for a particular industry will also have a prominent role in the future.
Follow Startup Story
Related Posts
