Stellaris Closes Third Fund Of $300 Mn

Stellaris closed its third fund of USD 300 million to back early-stage founders in India building for Indian and global markets. It said that its strategy with the new fund remains consistent with the first two funds. It will continue to back companies in technology and technology-enabled sectors, partnering with them early in their journey.

Since its inception, it has backed 44 tech startups across two funds, 60 per cent of which were inception-stage businesses. It stated to be privileged to be an early backers of consumer brand Mamaearth which went public last year, and in Whatfix, a digital adoption platform that recently raised a USD 125 Million Series E round. More recently, it backed EV financing startup Turno, credit-on-UPI provider Kiwi, AI SaaS companies Orbitshift and CARPL.ai, credit improvement platform Goodscore, and D2C consumer brand Nestasia.

The company said that India’s startup ecosystem has transformed since it started its fund, with a 4 times growth in the deal flow and a rise in repeat entrepreneurs and founders from successful startups. With this new fund, it is excited to back founders using technology to solve deep problems in large markets.

With the ecosystem evolving and with new themes emerging, the company said that its team has grown and adapted to better support founders. Naman Lahoty, a repeat entrepreneur and previously a Principal with the firm, has been appointed as a Partner. Naman joined us in 2019 to focus on consumer investments and has invested in AI webcomic startup Dashtoon and D2C consumer brand Zouk, among others. Chetan GMS, previously SVP Finance, will now be the firm’s CFO, while Preseedha Premnath has been appointed as the firm’s General Counsel. Additionally, Vardhan Dharnidharka, an AI/ML engineering leader previously based in New York, has joined as an Investment Principal and relocated to Bangalore.