[Funding alert] Elevation Capital raises $670 million India Fund VIII

Early-stage venture capital firm Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners) has raised $670 million, the largest ever fund for India, to accelerate partnerships with early-stage companies in India.

The company will continue to focus on funding in the seed and Series A stages of early-stage companies.

The company will use the funds to invest in areas such as consumer internet, fintech, SaaS, in addition to emerging topics such as Web3 and cryptocurrencies.

The company said that India’s startup ecosystem has the potential to grow more than 10X over the next decade, with Indian tech companies reaching a market cap of $2 million.

Gurgaon-based Elevation Capital was founded in 2002 by Ravi Adusumalli, It is an early-stage venture capital firm with a focus on Consumers, Enterprises, Logistics, and B2B.

“Elevation’s Fund VIII is one of the largest India-focused venture platforms to date, enabling us to continue being a pivotal catalyst for Indian founders to fulfill their aspirations. Fund VIII will allow us to demonstrate a greater commitment to exceptional founders with a larger initial investment and continued support to them until much later in their journeys,” the firm said in a statement.

“Early-stage investing is where we have found our ikigai — the perfect intersection of our capabilities, passion, and the needs of the founder ecosystem. As a result, our investment pace has been accelerating and went up by 100%, just in the past 12 months,” the statement said.

“At Elevation, we have played a crucial role in nurturing the earliest of tech entrepreneurs in India. Over the past two decades, we have invested almost $2Bn of capital in over 150 companies across 7 pools of capital, with 13 early-stage investments becoming unicorns,” the company said in a statement.

The company has invested approximately $2 billion capital in more than 150 companies. These companies include many big names such as Meesho, NoBroker, Unacademy, Sharechat, Paytm, Swiggy and others. In July 2017, The VC had raised $350 million for its third India fund.