Artha Group launches Rs 450 crore Artha Select Fund

• ByStartupStory     |    October 11, 2022

The Artha Select Fund (‘ASF’), a 450 crore winners-only micro VC fund, has been launched by the Mumbai-based Artha Group.

This opportunities fund has (so far) received funding from the Pune-based Kirloskar Family Office, the family office of former Reliance Capital CIS Madhusudan Kela, Abhinav Sinha (MD – British International Investment), Narendra Karnavat of CA firm Karnavat and Co., Jashvant Raval of JCR & Co., Mumbai-based listed firm SAT Industries, Varun Bansal of Jayashree Polymers, Rajiv Lakhotia of Abhinav Sinha, who was a member of the investment committee at AVF, will also join the ASF committee.

In their subsequent rounds, ASF will support category-winning businesses from Artha’s portfolio. The Fund will invest up to 20 crores in firms where Artha is already an investor in the Series B round and an additional 20 crores in the Series C round. 12–14 startups will receive funding from ASF via this vehicle.

As current LPs eagerly decided to double down on the winners of Artha Venture Fund (‘AVF’), India’s first early-stage

Daalchini, an AVF portfolio company, raised its Series A investment, which was organised by Unicorn India Ventures. Daalchini’s seed and Pre-Series A rounds had been won by AVF. In addition, AVF recently disclosed its investment in Nirmalaya, a startup focused on the circular economy.

“Artha has been a true partner for LenDenClub, investing in us when we were disbursing barely 8-10 loans per month,” said Bhavin Patel, CEO and founder of LenDenClub, India’s largest P2P-lending platform. Dipesh and I were able to set strong KPIs for the company in those early stages and make sure that our business decisions were supported by data thanks to their encouragement and comprehension of dealing with other startups.

Ohm Enterprises (Amal Parikh’s family office), Tuscan Ventures, Som Ventures LLP, QED Innovation Labs, Angel List, and star Indian cricketer Hardik Pandya contributed to LenDenClub’s $10 million Series A funding round in December 2021. (IIFL Wealth).

“Artha was the driving force behind our seed round and continued to invest in the Pre-Series A. Additionally, their $1.8 million Series A investment boosted investor trust, which helped us close the transaction swiftly, continued Patel.

LenDenClub distributed more than 1000 crores over its network in August 2022, becoming the first Indian P2P platform to reach that milestone. Since closing its Series A financing, the company has expanded 20x. Soon, Artha will make its first closure and its first investment public.

“Over the previous ten years, the Kirloskar family has developed an expertise of evaluating private companies, prospects, and entrepreneurs through venture investing,” says Chris Kolenaty, Head of Private Investments at the Kirloskar Family Office. I first met Anirudh in Dublin eight years ago, and we stayed in touch while he expanded the Artha portfolio. During AVF’s second close, we grew more at ease with Anirudh and chose to start this time. We are thrilled to work with him as we envision him becoming one of India’s top private investors!

We are overjoyed with the outstanding response to our winner’s Fund, said Anirudh A. Damani, managing partner of Artha Select Fund. Early-growth rounds present a fantastic chance for investors to support founders at a turning point in their ventures, in our opinion. With ASF, we give our founders more autonomy to pursue profitable business metrics like revenues and good unit economics.

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