Funds managed
| Fund name | Asset Class | License |
| Artha Venture Fund | Early stage micro- VC( seed investor) | SEBI AIF Cat 1 |
About the AMC
- Artha Venture Fund- I established in 2018.
- Anirudh Damani, Managing Partner, founder of Artha India Venture and Arthra Energy Resource, completed his Double Major in Economics and Business Administration from Austin College, Texas, USA.
- Vinod Keni, Growth Partner, ex-CFO and Partner of Aavishkaar Venture Fund and the IAN Fund was also the co-founders of the Atlanta chapter of TiE and is a global Charter Member. He was the co-founder and is now the Director Emeritus of the Atlanta CEO HiTech Council. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of TiE Mumbai and a Chair of the Fintech SIG.
Investment Philosophy (for firm)
They challenge and mentor early stage startups to evolve them into sustainable businesses.
They are primarily a sector agnostic fund; sectorial preferences evolve with constantly changing trends.
Consumer Goods and Services
- IBEF states that the spending of every Indian consumer will double by 2025
- Indian consumers are gaining confidence to make larger transactions online
Consumption Enablers
- Fintech start-ups will drive consumption by providing easy access to financing and payment solutions
- Legal-tech will help lawyers compete in an overcrowded market and provide more efficient services to consumers
- POS Credit, Remittances, Big Data Analytics, Travel and Logistics platforms that will aid in simplifying processes
B2B Goods and Services
- The Indian B2B e-commerce market will grow to INR 45 trillion by 2020
- B2B companies are generally cashflow positive and generate significant profits
- The proliferation of B2C companies (online or offline) will require support from B2B and B2B2C companies Eg. supply chain, artificial intelligence, data Analytics, robotics, enterprise blockchain
https://inc42.com/features/artha-venture-fund-anirudh/-
Anirudh’s investment philosophy revolves around four basic mantras-
- Invest in strong execution
- Invest in companies that have a low CAPEX
- Invest in business models that will provide operating profits
- Invest in companies operating in both, large and niche markets
About AVF – I Fund
- AVF-I will invest in pre to early revenue startups, preferably where they are the first investor (in India we would be called the seed investor).
- They will invest between Rs. 1-1.50 crores in each early-stage investment and participate in the follow-on rounds with larger cheques i.e. 3-4 crores in pre-Series A and 6-9 crores in the Series A round. Therefore, once they invest in a company, they can (provided they perform) expect between Rs. 10-14.50 crores over the course of 3 rounds, from them (an institutional investor). This is a significant USP compared to the other seed funds because we have earmarked a portion of the fund corpus to invest in follow-on rounds.
- It is a close ended fund for a period of 7 years, can be extended to 2 more years.
Media
Title: Reaching for the stars: Artha Venture Fund invests Rs 3.6 crore in Agnikul, Source: Financial Express, Date: March 2020
Artha Venture Fund (AVF), an early-stage micro-VC fund, has announced an investment of $500,000 ( Rs 3.6 crore) in space-tech company Agnikul in its Pre-Series A funding round. Agnikul is an aerospace startup incubated at IIT Madras’ incubation cell (NCCRD). It designs and manufactures launch vehicles capable of carrying up to 100 kg of weight to Lower Earth Orbits (LEO).
Title: How Artha Fund aims to tap into India’s growth story with Anirudh Damani, Date: March 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMzpcQfY-pM
Artha is a small fund, which aims to have higher ownership in investee companies (20-25%). They do theme based investing, are sector agnostic. Target size of the fund is 200 aiming to raise 70% from domestic and rest from global LPs. He has a plan to create a fund house , with multiple fund managers managing their own micro fund to attack different parts of the market, different themes and have individualist performance. Anirudh doesn’t put a gender tag while making an investment. He has a different framework for different stages of investment- looks for strong cohesive team at seed level, looks at positive unit economic, product market fit and ability to scale at pre series. He suggests to the investee companies which are failing, to fail fast in order to take advantage of other business opportunity in the market. Discussed exist strategies for startups in India, its more of M&A and reverse M&A than IPO, as these businesses (startups) will see long period of losses on the balance sheet level and retail investors are not ready for that.
Analyst questions
- What is the value addition done by you in the investee company apart from capital?
- What matrix do you use while investing in a company? Do you look for IRR or pay back period?
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