StartupXseed's Fund II hits final close at Rs 243 Cr, gets oversubscribed by 20%

StartupXseed Ventures, an early-stage B2B VC firm that invests in seed to Pre-Series A funding rounds, has announced the final close of its Fund II at Rs 243 crore commitment—20% more than initially targeted. 

As per the official release, the fund also saw participation from Fund I investors, along with top family offices and corporates.

The typical first cheque size will be between Rs 5-12 crore.

BV Naidu, Managing Partner at StartupXseed, said,

“Having expertise in the B2B segment, we have helped founders to gain commendable success and our average markup of past investments is more than 6X. A couple of Fund II LPs doubled their commitment at the final close after witnessing similar growth indicators on the Fund II portfolio.”

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Founded by BV Naidu (Former Director STPI) along with Mohandas Pai (through Aarin Capital), Ramakrishna V, and Ravi Thakur, the VC firm is the investment manager of “Aaruha Technology Fund I and II” registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) as Category I—under Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) Regulations 2012.

StartupXseed is a sector-agnostic fund with investments in deeptech, B2B, SaaS to spacetech, including the areas of cybersecurity, semiconductors, AI/ML, drones, and new frontier startups in India, with a focus on global markets. 

As part of its “Co-Founder Program”, it helps startups build sustainable businesses by providing strategic support through market access, mentorship, corporate governance, and follow-on investor connect.

Ravi Thakur, Co-founding Partner of the fund, commented,

“On the investments, we primarily look at solutions where the convergence of new business models and technologies is imperative. This way, we are helping ourselves in working on the next big verticals ahead of the curve. We are also spending time helping founders double to triple their topline year on year.”

Besides the existing GPs (BV Naidu, Ravi Thakur, Sid Mookerji, Ramakrishna V, Mohan Das Pai and V Balakrishnan) for Fund II, StartupXseed added Dr Krishna Mikkilineni, ex-CTO and Board Member of Honeywell Inc, as a GP. 

StartupXseed is looking for startups with forward innovations in technologies related to cloud migration of brownfield projects, AI-led workflow automation, energy storage technologies for quick discharge applications, cybersecurity for APIs, AI-led ecommerce enablers, and other disruptive technologies in respective markets. 

StartupXseed has known to be an early backer in startups including DarwinBox, CloudSEK, Bellatrix, and AUS (Aarav Unmanned Systems), holding an estimated 100X investment value in DarwinBox, which became a unicorn this year.

Over the next year, it could exit some of its other portfolio companies.