Antler India Nears Final Close of $75 Million Pre-Seed Fund for Early-Stage Startups
- ByStartupStory | September 22, 2023
Antler India, an early-stage investment platform, is nearing the final close of its maiden pre-seed fund, which amounts to approximately INR 600 crore (about $75 million). The fund has already closed INR 500 crore and aims to complete the final close in the current quarter. It has garnered support from six institutional and sovereign wealth investors, including SIDBI, as well as over 125 limited partners, including several unicorn founders.
Antler India has already made commitments to 45 investments in India, ranging from $200,000 to $400,000 per investment, with a focus on sectors such as SaaS, Fintech, and consumer tech. It has also ventured into new themes like Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC), AI from India, Climate tech, Web3 infrastructure, Vertical SaaS, and Spacetech. With a fund size of approximately INR 600 crore, this represents one of the largest pools of venture capital dedicated to company formation and the pre-seed stage in India.
“We are extremely grateful to our early believers who have backed our vision of creating an institutional platform focused on the company formation stage, with the leverage of the world’s fastest-growing early-stage network. We are equally grateful to the founders whom we have partnered with,” said Nitin Sharma and Rajiv Srivatsa, Co-founders and General Partners at Antler India.
To Support Founders With Capital, Network “In the next 18 months, besides establishing a physical presence in additional ecosystems like Delhi NCR and Mumbai, we aim to double down on emerging themes and bring a range of capabilities for founders beyond just capital, like we have done for ONDC-Beckn with Nandan Nilekani and team. We are thrilled to be closing the greenshoe portion of the fund soon and aim to deliver exceptional returns to our LPs in the years to come via a Day Zero investing focus,” they added.
Antler, founded in 2017, is a global early-stage venture capital firm with a presence in 27 locations worldwide. It provides access to a network of over 900 startups. The firm’s global advisory board includes prominent figures such as Larry Summers (former US Treasury Secretary), David Fischer (former Chief Revenue Officer of Facebook), Todd Ruppert (Retired CEO of T Rowe Price), and Sheila Patel (former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management).
In June 2023, Antler announced the final close of its $285 million Antler Elevate fund, which supports growth-stage startups from Series A onwards.
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