Aditi Shrivastava
Season Two Ventures will make about 30 investments from this fund, starting with an initial cheque size of $500,000 to $1 million, and invest about $1 million in additional capital later on, to scale up the ventures.
With the rush of capital and new types of investors coming in, venture capitalists said the time taken for startups to grow their business and rack up $100 million in funding has also shrunk over the past few years.
The companies did not disclose the transaction value, but sources briefed on the matter told ET that the investment valued Shadowfax at about $200-$250 million, and is also likely to see other new investors join in.
Oyo, Ola, Freshworks, Flipkart and Paytm are mong leading home-grown tech ventures that have brought in industry veterans to address compliance and governance issues.
This is the third such fund infusion into the unit this year, taking the total investment to Rs 5,701 crore. The investment comes at a time when the ecommerce giant is preparing for its last sale of the season — Big Shopping Days.
One of the most prominent VC firms in Silicon Valley, Accel said it will continue to scout for early-stage deals across consumer internet, enterprise, financial services, healthcare, and Software as a Services (SaaS) startups. The Bengaluru-based Accel India’s $450 million fund saw 70% of its investments in the range of $2 million or less.
Across the sector, monthly growth fell to 1-2% between Aug and Oct, hurt by a slowdown in consumer spending, cut in discounts and promotions.
Yulu is a dockless, lithium-powered scooter focusing largely on the sub-5 km first- and last-mile connectivity, the same market which Ola backed Vogo and Sequoia, Accel backed Bounce are targeting.
Ola aims to raise capital separately for the independent entity and will pit it directly against larger rivals like Paytm, Google Pay, PhonePe. Short-term credit, mobile wallet, insurance and utility bill payments are some of the services housed under Ola Money.
Revant Bhate, formerly with venture capital firm Kalaari Capital and Dhyanesh Shah, who was an investor at Eight Road Ventures -- Fidelity Investments’ venture arm -- Mosaic Wellness, which is currently operating in stealth mode and building a slew of digital-first consumer brands.
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