Exfinity Venture closes second fund with Rs 300 crore

Exfinity Venture Partners, a Bengaluru-based business to business (B2B) focussed technology venture capital firm, has made a final closure of its second fund — Exfinity Technology Fund-Series II with a corpus of Rs 300 crore.

“Our Series II fund’s strategy remains the same as the first, as we will invest in frontier B2B technology space. We have already invested in three companies and scouting to invest in approximately 17 to 18 companies,” said Exfinity Ventures Managing Partner and CIO Shailesh Ghorpade in an interaction with DH.

Exfinity Venture Partners LLP, incorporated in October 2013, has a total of Rs 420 crore assets under management at present, including its first fund of Rs 120 crore.
Besides industry leaders TV Mohandas Pai, Girish Paranjpe, Balakrishnan V, Deepak Ghaisas, and Rajiv Kuchhal, the fully subscribed fund is promoted by family offices, ultra high-networth-individuals (UHNIs), and institutions.

Ghorpade said Exfinity would like to focus on six domains like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, big data, analytics, cyber security and Internet of things (IoT). “We wil do pre Series A with typical ticket size between $1 million and $2 million. We will help companies raise Series A and Series B funds,” he said.

Exfinity’s first fund has investee companies like AI startup Mad Street Den Systems and Virtual Power System. “Mad Street Den Systems raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A funding round from Sequoia Capital. Also, Virtual Power System raised funds from Clear Ventures. By next January, a couple of companies will close Series A funding,” said Ghorpade.

When asked about the performance of the investee companies, he pointed out that overall they are performing well. “These companies are product and IP companies. The matrix used to calculate their growth is the number of IPs registrered, products brought out and the number of used cases,” he said.

Ghorpade pointed out that now investors are very cautious and looking carefully at the unit economics. “I believe that much more action will happen in investment arena in next year. New business models and consolidation will drive this,” he said.