Unitary Helion, now known as Arkam Ventures has declared the close of Rs 325 crore of initial Rs 700 crore fund setup for startups. The firm has decided to dedicate the funds for early-to-growth-stage startups in Series A, Series B stages across financial services, healthcare, food, agriculture, and mobility industry.
The VC firm has decided to have an average investment of Rs 10-15 crore in startups for their Series A round and Rs 20-25 crore in for their Series B round. They will be focusing on 15-18 companies through this fund. Their priority will be investing in founders who posses a deep understanding of mass India or the middle-income layer of the market and the ones using technology to develop low-cost solutions and efficient business models.
Rahul Chandra, cofounder of Arkam Ventures stated, “We will likely lean towards business models that have clear economics and retain healthy margins.” The firm has already made 2 investments in Digital lending startup Krazybee and B2B supply chain platform Jumbotail.
US based impact fund Capria led the first close of the fund which also witnessed participation from SIDBI and several other family offices based in India and US. Founded in 2017 by former Helion Ventures partner and MD Rahul Chandra and former Kalaari Capital partner Bala Srivastava, the company counts Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and MakeMyTrip cofounder Rajesh Magow as advisors and investors.
Former CEO of Microsoft India Ravi Venkatesan, Reliance Jio president Vikas Choudhry, Five9 executive VP Anand Chandrasekharan, Southeast Asian microbiome bank AMiLI’s cofounder Jeremy Lim, insurtech company Xceedance’s CEO Arun Balakrishnan, and BigBasket head HR Hari TN are other noted advisors in the Venture Capital firm.
The funding by Arkam Ventures came at a crucial time when Indian startups have been facing a dearth of investments due to the ongoing crisis. According to a report, startups in the country have raised about $4.1 billion dollar across 208 companies in the first half of 2020. There was a massive dip between funds raised in March and April due to the worsening situation of the virus.