An early-stage B2B SaaS venture capital firm called Pentathlon Ventures has announced the opening of its second fund, with a target corpus of Rs 450 crores.
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The goal of the fund is to finance 25 B2B SaaS start-ups. In the B2B SaaS market, Pentathlon Ventures will provide funding for ground-breaking solutions in the areas of Enterprise Digital Transformation, E-commerce Enablement, Fintech, Vertical SaaS, Applied AI, Sustainable Tech, and HealthTech.
The VC firm was founded in 2020 by a team of marquee entrepreneurs and industry veterans: Gireendra Kasmalkar (Ideas to Impacts, Verisoft); Sandeep Chawda (Globant, Clarice,Veritas); Saurabh Lahoti (Grassroots Business Fund, Ennovent); Madhukar Bhatia (Sapience, Symphony, Veritas); Ashok Mayya (Rising Pharma, Citron Pharma); Hemant Joshi (Sapience, Symphony, Veritas), and Shashank Deshpande (Globant, Clarice, Veritas). Pentathlon Ventures is a distinctive VC firm established by entrepreneurs to promote other entrepreneurs. The founders collectively have over 150 years of business experience.
Commenting on the fund’s investment thesis, Pentathlon Ventures’ Managing Partner Sandeep Chawda said, “The revenues coming from India based B2B start-ups are expected to grow 25X in the next 8 years. With an impressive 50% faster time to revenue, better revenue predictability, and solid gross margins ranging between 70-80%, it presents extraordinary prospects of building sustainable businesses. In addition to these aspects, with our core expertise being in this space, early-stage B2B SaaS companies built from India continue to be our primary investment thesis. The success of our investments from Fund I further strengthens our commitment to this strategy.”
Pentathlon Ventures is soliciting money for Fund II from a variety of local and international limited partners, including prominent business executives, corporations, and institutions. Maintaining its founder-centric ethos, the fund draws on the extensive knowledge and network of its partners, its cutting-edge tech collaborations, and its distinctive initiatives to offer full support to the start-ups in its portfolio. For instance, Pentathlon Ventures has developed a network of SaaS founders and GTM leaders through its “GTMDialogues” program to offer mentoring on important business matters like Go To Market tactics, product distribution, and user acquisition.
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Speaking on Fund II, Pentathlon Ventures’ Managing Partner Gireendra Kasmalkar said, “Couple of decades back, India was known for off-shore IT services. Later, B2C start-ups gained prominence because of India’s population/consumption story. Today, Indian B2B start-ups are on their way to become global leaders within this decade. Add to this the tailwinds from the global focus moving to India. We are truly on the cusp of a huge virtuous cycle.”
The venture capital business has made 23 start-up investments through its inaugural fund, and has an impressive track record of successful exits and follow-on investments. Within just two to three years, its strategic initiatives and investments have greatly increased the revenues of the portfolio companies. Among the companies in the fund’s portfolio are Deeptek, Rezolve, Spyne, Dista, TurboHire, and ShopSe.
About Pentathlon Ventures
Using the innovation, talent, and cost advantage of the Indian startup ecosystem, Pentathlon Ventures is an early stage VC fund that focuses on the booming B2B SaaS market. They offers Expertise, Ecosystem, & Capital to help early-stage technology companies scale their businesses. The goal of Pentathlon Ventures is to support aspirational digital entrepreneurs at every level of their development. As a founder-led VC firm, it seeks to close the funding gap between Series A and A+ rounds by assisting creative entrepreneurs in developing and flourishing.
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