The fund will specialise in backing early-stage fintech startups in India and Southeast Asia.
White Venture is among the latest venture funds to be backed by founders and seasoned internet sector executives.
- Udaan cofounder Sujeet Kumar and Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy are limited partners in Tanglin Venture Partners.
- Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham recently launched Together Fund to back SaaS (software as a service) startups.
- Dream Sports cofounder and CEO Harsh Jain is also setting up his fund to back early-stage startups operating in the sports arena.
While Gupta and Amrish Rau, who earlier cofounded Citrus Pay that was acquired by Naspers in 2016, will serve as limited partners and advisors in White Venture, Sweta Rau will be its sole portfolio manager. The three have pumped $15 million of their own in the fund. White Venture’s LPs also include Sequoia Capital India, one of its largest sponsors. Japan’s Credit Saison, TVF Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, and Cred founder Kunal Shah are among other names that have backed the fund.
While White Venture is a fintech-focused fund, Sweta Rau said it has kept 30% of the fund open for investments in non-fintech startups too. “For any company or founder we like and feel they are building good companies and we can add value, we will back them,” she told ET.
It will write cheques of anywhere between $250,000 and $1 million and double down on its best performing bets with follow-on cheques totalling investments to the tune of $3-5 million, she said.
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Amrish Rau and Gupta are LPs in some other venture funds as well.
The trio has been actively angel investing since 2016 and boasts of a portfolio of over 100 companies including Cred, neobank Open, Dunzo, and Mobile Premier League. They have backed at least eight startups that are now valued at more than $500 million.
Besides blockbuster exits in startups like Cred and MPL, the White Venture Capital team made a partial exit from Open, which is
currently closing a new funding round at $1 billion valuation, as reported by ET.
“We have been angel investing for five years and realised that founders need help on basic questions like, should they go with one idea over the other, or about the timing of fundraise also,” Sweta Rau said. “We thought we can be a part of their journey by institutionalising what we were doing… This will also enable us to write bigger cheques (compared to personal investments) and be with them for a longer period of time.”
Gupta said the fund will get access to a pool of experienced founders who can assist new fintech founders over a diverse range of issues. The backing of White Venture Capital to an early-stage startup will act as a signal to other investors to further back their bets, he said.
“Operators validate the business model and the founders’ ability to build the business… If you look at our personal investments, all of them have gone on to raise Series A, B, C,” Gupta said.
Amrish Rau said, “We think that the future is going to be about operator VCs rather than a VC who is going to be a finance associate.”
For White Venture, Amrish Rau and Gupta’s extensive network in the fintech space would play a critical role in sourcing deals in fledgling startups early on. Sweta Rau said that most of the capital from the fund will be deployed in India but about one-third of it would be in Southeast Asia.
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