Venture capital fund Whiteboard Capital, identified for its early-stage investments in fintechs Cred, Jupiter and Deserve, in addition to shopper manufacturers Damensch and NatHabit raised its second fund of Rs. 300 crore, double its preliminary goal of Rs. 150 crores.
The agency, which has already returned 1x to its traders, has an unrealized return of round 6x on its first fund after investing in round 45 startups from a complete corpus of $10 million, Anshu Prashar, associate, Whiteboard Capital, advised ET. The primary fund exited eight startups partially or absolutely.
The agency’s second fund closed in December 2023, though this growth was not beforehand reported.
In contrast to different VC companies, Whiteboard Capital differentiates itself by combining the roles of incubator and early-stage funder. It has an working crew assigned to portfolio firms for months at a time, working in areas resembling operations, particulars analytics and expertise.
On August 14, ET reported that Whiteboard is likely one of the incubators behind the sports activities athleisure picture launched by retired Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and former Swiggy Instamart head Karthik Gurumurthy. The agency has used an analogous incubation strategy with UpnClub, a business-to-business wholesale platform for fast-moving shopper items.
Fund 2, which has already began allocating capital, contains a number of household places of work and home companies as restricted companions (LPs). It plans to spend money on round 50 firms in its current portfolio with a major heart on follow-on investments.
In Fund 1, one factor I believe we will do higher is we get extra of the portfolio firms. We might have written follow-on cheques. However we could not as a result of we did not have sufficient capital. So, we needed to be extra considered with the follow-on funding,” Prasher advised ET.
This process has a broader development amongst early-stage traders that elevate massive funds to heart on follow-on investments that achieve deeper involvement in portfolio firms.
Whiteboard Capital was based by Sandeep Tandon, co-founder of cellular recharge platform Freecharge, and Kunal Shah, founding father of Cred. Because the identify suggests, Whiteboard Capital displays the agency’s philosophy of investing in founders earlier than their enterprise plans are absolutely shaped, serving to them refine their merchandise. This process allows Whiteboard to spend money on decrease enterprise valuations. Most of his investments occurred when startups have been lower than two months previous or not but integrated.
Whereas Whiteboard was securing its Securities and Alternate Board of India (SEBI) Various Funding Fund (AIF) clearance in 2017, Shah ended his involvement with Whiteboard Capital and left the agency to affix Sequoia as a guide. After Shah’s exit, Tandon introduced in Prashar, a former early-stage investor at Innoven Capital and Sama Capital, as a associate.
Presently, about 40% of Whiteboard Capital’s investments are within the shopper sector, together with shopper manufacturers and shopper expertise, whereas the remaining 30-35% of the portfolio is allotted to monetary providers firms.
The agency classifies its investments into two classes: core and non-core firms. For its second fund, the agency outlined main firms as these by which it has an possession stake of greater than 7.5% and has invested greater than $200,000.
“We see extra $400-750 million exits in India and doubtlessly some $3-5 billion exits, which is why we’ve consciously stayed on this process of being very early, taking that guess or opening on founders,” Prasher stated.
Discussing the inflow of tech enterprise capitalists into the patron house, Prasher stated it creates a tailwind for portfolio firms, serving to them appeal to higher consideration and follow-on funding as they strategy commodity-industry match.