3one4 Capital launches $100 mn early-growth opportunities fund

The fund has already received commitments for 40% of the targeted corpus from new and existing investors. Fund III has been launched within three quarters from its last fund’s closure in December 2019. Fund III will increase 3one4 Capital’s capital under management to over ₹1,550 crore ($210 million).

“At 3one4 Capital, our objective is to work with Indian entrepreneurs and help build transformative companies. Our investor base now combines an intellectually-diverse and globally-positioned pool of resources that provide a consistent competitive edge to the firm and its portfolio companies," said Pranav Pai, managing partner of 3one4 Capital.

The deployment of Fund III will continue with the firm’s core strategy of building portfolios of 25-30 early-stage startups in each fund, it said in a statement. The new vehicle’s focus areas include themes such as SaaS and enterprise automation, direct-to-consumer, media and content, fintech, and deep technology. Within these themes, the fund will cover sectors such as health, machine-driven intelligent services, ed-tech, agri-tech, logistics and distribution, food-tech, mobility, Indic language-focused applications. Fund III will invest in ticket sizes between $500,000 and $4 million and will support an active follow-on strategy to back its investments into later stages.

"The current paradigm shift has demanded the acceleration of disruptive business models and a rebalancing of the early-stage investment lens. With this new fund, 3one4 Capital is purpose-built to be deeply involved across the lifecycle of the next innovation engines from India," said Siddarth Pai, Managing Partner, 3one4 Capital.

The firm has four prior funds through which it currently has ₹800 crore ($110 million) of capital under management. 3one4's investments include Licious, BetterPlace, Open, Bugworks, YourStory, DarwinBox, Pocket Aces, Faircent, Begin, LoanTap, Jupiter, Yulu, and Tracxn.