Early-stage investor Ankur Capital, which focuses on businesses that use technology, has received commitments from two of its existing limited partners for its third fund that is targeting a corpus of $150 million (Rs 1,200 crore), per an announcement on Tuesday.
British International Investment and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation have made subsequent commitments to Ankur Capital’s third fund—Ankur Capital Fund III. They join the U.S International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Self-Reliant India (SRI) Fund, which had committed to the fund earlier, the firm said in a statement.
SRI Fund is a Central Government initiative under the Ministry of MSME, anchored by NSIC Venture Capital Fund (NVCFL), a 100% owned subsidiary of The National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) and managed by SBICAP Ventures Limited (SVL) as the Investment Manager.
With Fund III, Ankur will continue its focus on pre-Series A investments with entry cheque sizes in the $1-2 million range and continue its support up to $10 million. Since its inception, Ankur Capital has been backing deep technology innovations that address problems such as improving market supply chain efficiency, agricultural productivity, climate and health-linked innovations, new products and services for the mass market, and more.
“At Ankur, we continue to be attracted to entrepreneurs creating the next generation of technologies across sectors and are particularly bullish about the deep science technologies, agtech, and climate opportunities. We look forward to investing in the entrepreneurs building for the next decade with our sleeves rolled up,” said Ritu Verma, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Ankur Capital.
The firm’s past funds have invested in over 30 portfolio companies, including seafood B2B platform Captain Fresh, biotech company String Bio, B2B fruit marketplace Vegrow, battery chemistry developer Offgrid Energy Lab, agri inputs marketplace BigHaat, SaaS-based agritech company Cropin, and AI-based breast cancer screening solution Niramai.
