Helion Ventures’ Rahul Chandra to Launch $100M India-Centric Early-Stage Fund
Rahul Chandra, the managing director of Indian venture capital fund Helion Venture Partners LLC, he is all set to raise an early-stage fund with a target corpus of Rs 645 crore ($100 million) called Unitary Helion.
The India-centric fund, will seek to make Series A investments in 18-20 companies across fintech, digital marketplaces and value chain innovation in core sectors such as financial services, agriculture, logistics and healthcare, Chandra said in a media release.
The new vehicle is looking to raise more than half of the corpus from overseas investors, and will make the first close at $40 million by the fourth quarter of the current fiscal year.
Chandra will, however, continue to manage the existing portfolio of Helion, along with his two other partners, Sanjeev Aggarwal and Ashish Gupta. Helion has so far invested about $600 million in 35 firms, which include Shopclues, BigBasket, Ezetap, Azure Power, Makemytrip, redBus and Taxiforsure.
Helion Advisors will back Unitary Helion with operating and infrastructure support. Some of Helion’s top executives had quit the VC firm to launch their own ventures. About a year ago, three of the six partners at Helion had quit to set up another venture capital firm – Stellaris Venture Partners.
Helion’s co-founder Kanwaljit Singh had also quit to launch seed investment firm Fireside Ventures. Subsequently, however, he decided to join back as independent director on the boards of the VC firm’s investee companies.
Aggarwal has also joined hands with Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani to set up a $100-million venture capital fund focusing on mid-stage startups.
