Floated by co-founder at Helion Ventures, Rahul Chandra, and former partner at Kalaari Capital, BalaSrinivasa, Arkam Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm has close its maiden investment fund at $106 million.
The investment comes nearly two years after the firm said it had hit the first close of $30 million.
The fresh fund is backed by institutional investors including British International Investment Plc, Nippon India Digital Innovation, Evolvence Group, Capria, and SIDBI. Individual backers like Sanjeev Bikhchandani (founder of Infoedge), Binny Bansal (co-founder of Flipkart), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (founder of Paytm), and Rajesh Magow (co-founder of MakeMyTrip).
Bengaluru-based venture capital firm Arkam invests in digital-first companies across sectors including financial services, healthcare, food and agriculture, education and logistics, as well as SaaS platforms in horizontal digital infrastructure.
The firm owns 12 portfolio companies including Smallcase, Jar, Jumbotail, Jai Kisan, krazybee, and crypto investment platform Mudrex, among others. Of these, seven have already raised subsequent investments.
“Around 40% of the corpus raised by Arkam has come from rupee denominated capital. The delay in closing the fund was due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its related uncertainty, especially in 2020”, said, Rahul Chandra, Partner at Arkam Ventures.
“We will continue to back startups in mobility, fintech, edtech/skilling, health and agriculture across B2B and B2C. These have to cater to middle India,” he added.
Rahul Chandra said early-stage investments in India have been competitive with big funds like Sequoia Capital and Accel, but added that the fund has been able to win its share of the deal. However, he added that the pace of the deal has slowed in the past few months due to the global adverse conditions. The company said they invest in Series A and Series B companies with an average check size of Rs 10 crore to Rs 20 crore.
About Arkam Ventures :
Arkam Ventures (previously Unitary Helion) is an early-stage technology fund partnering with outstanding founders with innovative ideas aimed at Middle India – the 400 million people just below the top of the pyramid. Call them the Next 400M. The biggest start-up outcomes of the next decade will come from innovating for this market. The smartest technology entrepreneurs they know are attracted to the challenges in these mega markets and the opportunity to build industry redefining businesses that enhance affordability, access, and quality of service.
The COVID crisis, while very challenging in the short-term, has accelerated digitization momentum in their core sectors – financial services, healthcare, food/agri, education/jobs and mobility. It has forced permanent consumer and behavioral changes that favor technology-centric solutions and create strong tailwinds for disruptive and resilient founders. They are likely to be the winners of tomorrow.
