India’s first purely proptech fund garners 7 anchor investors

Bengaluru: About seven anchor investors - including the likes of Ajmera Realty, Rustomjee, Savvy and Prestige - have collectively pledged approximately Rs 80 crore or 20 per cent to Spyre VC’s maiden fundraising target of Rs 400 crore, principal Murali Krishna told DH on Wednesday. 

Launched in February 2024, Spyre VC is touted to be India’s first-ever proptech focussed fund, with also a greenshoe option of Rs 400 crore. It is backed by early stage startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts, consortium of realty developers Neovon and the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India.

“We’re targeting the first close towards April-end wherein anywhere between 30-40% of the Rs 400 crore corpus is expected to come in,” Krishna said. He expects to raise the overall amount within the next 3-6 months.

“In India the valuation of proptechs is still better. It is evolving,” Krishna reasoned, adding that fundraising does not appear to be a challenge in light of the increasing interest witnessed within the developer fraternity.

About 50% or Rs 200 crore in the first phase of the fund is earmarked for early stage proptech startups via cheques ranging between Rs 2-8 crore. The remaining will be channelled towards series A and series B funding rounds of growth stage startups in the domain, through ticket sizes between Rs 15-40 crore.

Since February, Spyre VC has engaged with around 150 proptech startups across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi. “We are in active talks with 4-5 startups out of 20-25 good candidates,” Krishna underscored. He expects deployment of initial funds to commence as early as April.

About 50 per cent of these startups proposed business plans across the brokerage, sales and listing sub segment. Co-working, co-living and student housing emerged as the next popular category, followed by fractional ownership platforms.  

Krishna, however, raised concerns about a steady pipeline of startups for the greenshoe corpus. “We need to create a pipeline and a funnel for the fund…Proptech is a very niche segment. The total number of startups within the segment must not be more than 2,000-3,000. Out of this only about 400-500 companies must have onboarded their first set of investors,” he explained.