In our new article series, we introduce the most exciting venture capital firms that are open for LP investments to our family office network. The article belongs to our exclusive single-family office guidebook, where we give guidance on the most relevant topics for newly established and already existing family investment vehicles.
In this article, we talked to Chiratae Ventures (formerly known as IDG Ventures India), a technology venture capital firm based out of India. We decided to get in touch with Chiratae based on their stellar record in backing market winners in India across multiple sectors.
Familyofficehub.io (FO): Briefly describe your focus: in which kind of startups are you investing, where is your geographical focus, what’s your average ticket size?
Chiratae Ventures: We invest in seed and Early stage (Series A/B) and select expansion stage technology ventures in the Indian market across Consumer, Software/SaaS, Fintech, Deeptech and Healthtech sectors. We invest in India and businesses that have a strong nexus to India. Average ticket sizes vary across the stages – $1 m for seed, $3-4 m for early stage, but with an overall cap on each investment. Chiratae has built a portfolio construction strategy with years of experience. We differentiate ourselves from other players in India by being a home-grown VC with a stable team with a deep India expertise from an entrepreneur’s perspective. Further, with a unique structured co-investment program for investors while also delivering returns consistently year on year for the past seven years, Chiratae has created a niche for itself as a leading player with track record. As one of the fastest growing economies of the world, India is perceived as one among the most favorable investment destinations globally. Within India, VC returns have beaten public market performance by a significant margin over a long-term horizon.
Since its inception in 2006, Chiratae has advised over $800m AUM across 4 funds having invested in 97 companies and exited from 36.
FO: What are exciting companies in your portfolio?
Chiratae Ventures: Overall Chiratae portfolio has seen 2 IPO’s (Newgen & Yatra) and 4 Unicorns (Flipkart (Acquired by Walmart), Lenskart, Policybazaar and FirstCry). We are also excited about the soonicorns in our portfolio like Cure.fit (health and fitness), Bounce (mobility) and Uniphore (Conversational AI). Other market leaders in the portfolio include Cropin (Agritech), Bizongo (packaging), Playsimple (online gaming) among others. We are proud to be early stage investors in companies which not only have become market leaders in India but have subsequently gone on to scale globally
FO: Why is investing in startups through Chiratae Ventures a good choice for family offices?
Chiratae Ventures: Chiratae Ventures has emerged as a leading player in the Indian VC landscape. It has built a stellar reputation of double-digit ROI and 7 consecutive years of returns for its investors who are both global and local.
This has been achieved by a stable and cohesive team of 20 people who have been together for a long time. We’re also backed by a global advisory board which consists of Ratan Tata (Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons), Bruno Raschle (MD, Schroder Adveq), Kris Gopalakrishnan (former executive vice chairman of Infosys), Manish Choksi (Non-executive Vice Chairman, Asian Paints) and Dr Andreas Hettich (global CEO, Hettich Group). We also provide coinvestment opportunities to our LP’s. With Chiratae Ventures’ focus on European Investors we have just onboarded Dr. Hettich, global CEO of Hettich Group, Germany. Europe is a big market where many of our portfolio companies have a footprint. Aether Biomedical is an example of such a startup in our portfolio which is co-located in both Europe and India.
FO: One last question, since many family offices from our readership are from Europe: are you also open to investments from European FOs?
Chiratae Ventures: Yes, we already have many European family and institutional investors as our LP’s and have secured repeat commits from them. PE/VC in India is at an inflection point. In the past six years, India has absorbed approximately $200b of PE/VC investments. This opportunity is expected to be over $500b in next six years.
Thanks for your time!
Website: www.chiratae.com
Headquarter: Bangalore, India
Picture Source: Naveed Ahmed
