Micro venture capital firm IVY Growth Associates has announced its SEBI-registered Category I AIF venture capital fund Arigato Capital with a target corpus of Rs 250 crore. The fund will invest in startups across sectors including agritech, cleantech, generative AI, fintech, consumer brands, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).
Arigato Capital is looking to begin capital raising in June 2024 and targeting closure of all commitments over the next 15 to 18 months. The first close is targetted at Rs 100 crore and will back startups beyond seed stage or in pre-series A stages, offering an average ticket size of $500,000.
The VC fund was founded by Prateek Toshniwal, Rachit Poddar, Mehul Shah, and Sharad Todi, with IVY Growth Associates being the limited partner. Through the new fund, IVY Growth said it aims to establish and expand a global corridor to connect angel investors and startups, with a special focus on the Middle East, the US, and Europe.
IVY Growth Associates said it has invested in more than 100 growth-stage startups. The firm has deployed Rs 20 crore from its fund and utilized over Rs 80 crore from syndicate funds within its network. Rupeek, BluSmart, and Zappfresh are some of its portfolio startups.
Importantly, the slowdown in startup funding has continued in India from last year even as a number of new startup funds have come up to back companies leveraging Gen AI. According to the data from Tracxn, Q1 2024 (till March 15) saw $1.6 billion investment across 222 rounds, down by 27 per cent from $2.2 billion in 291 rounds in Q4 2023. In Q3 last year, $1.9 billion was invested in 269 rounds and $1.6 billion was invested across 360 rounds in Q2.
The Q1 drop was 51 per cent from $3.2 billion invested in startups in Q1 2023 while funding rounds also declined by 48 per cent from 432 in Q1 last year, FE Aspire had reported earlier. Despite the decline, India secured the fourth-highest position globally in terms of funding raised during this period after the US ($19.5 billion), Europe ($9.2 billion) and China ($2.8 billion).