Unicorn India Ventures

Funds managed

Fund nameAsset ClassLicense
Unicorn India Venture (equity fund)Early stage (including seed)SEBI Cat 1
India 2020 Unicorn India Venture (debt fund)Later stageSEBI Cat 1
Unicorn India Venture (equity fund- II)Early stage (including seed)SEBI Cat 1
Unicorn Ascencion EIS fund (UK startups)Early stage

About the AMC

  • Launched its maiden fund in 2015.
  • Launched debt fund in Nov, 17.
  • Key staff- Anil Joshi, founder and managing partner at Unicorn India Ventures. He has been one of the pioneers of angel investments in India as head of operations and President at Mumbai Angels and Bangalore Angels.
  • Bhaskar Majumdar- Bhaskar is Founder and Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures and is a seasoned media & technology executive and entrepreneur. An Alumni of IIT Kharagpur and an AMP from Harvard.
  • Manoj Laddha is a partner at Unicorn India Ventures and  the promoter and managing director of J.R. Laddha Financial Services (JRL)

Investment Philosophy (for firm)

We have a strong investment focus on groundbreaking technology products or technology-backed services or processes across consumer, enterprise, healthcare and deep technology domains.

Founding team on-boarded. We like to invest in ventures that have 2 or more cofounders and shy away from solo founder ventures. Cofounders with complimenting outlook, skillset and domain expertise are the teams we are excited to partner with. While we back all types of entrepreneurs, the first time entrepreneur or the entrepreneur who has had a successful career, we value founder’s track record in building products or businesses as an entrepreneur or an executive. Strong intellect and academic training solidifies our conviction.

Product or beta ready. While we will constantly support you in developing and refining the product, an already developed market-fit product or a beta version gives us comfort and confidence.

Momentum: While we understand that most early stage ventures may need external funding before they go to market, we do like to see some traction in terms of the business growth, be it initial revenue bookings, vendors or partners on-boarded, customers acquired or in discussion stage.

https://www.unicornivc.com/equity/pdf/uiv-business-india.pdf

“Our investment philosophy has been to enter at an early stage with an average investment size of R3-5 crore and follow up to Series a and b by backing high potential startups,” explains majumdar,

“Our investment philosophy is supported by axioms such as ‘no invest in solo founder ventures’, ‘no investing in just an idea’, ‘good traction and revenues needed in the businesses of entrepreneurs who seek funding’ ‘preference to entrepreneurs investing their personal wealth in the start-up, with the entrepreneur’s skin seen in the game’ and ‘say no to high-cash-burn businesses’ said Joshi

Media

Title: Unicorn India Ventures makes first close of new fund at Rs 90 crore, Source: ET Prime, Date: March 2020

Unicorn India Ventures has made the first close of its latest fund at about Rs 90 crore, as the Mumbai-headquartered micro venture capital firm targets completing the fund raise for its new investment vehicle over the next 12 month. Fund-II, which has a target corpus of Rs 400 crore, has been backed by a number of family offices and investors from the firm’s maiden Rs 100 crore fund, which was set up in 2015.

“With the Fund-II, we hope to continue to identify high potential startups who are solving real problems by leveraging tech. In the tough economic and environmental times ahead, we believe technology will play a very important role in re-shaping the way we interface with others, the way businesses and trade is conducted and the way entire societies function,” Majumdar, managing partner at Unicorn India Ventures, said.

The firm has also announced its first bet from Fund-II, having backed neo-diagnostics startup Sascan, which has developed an integrated hardware and software solution that claims to detect oral cancer in an affordable and painless manner.

Title: UIV announces its second equity fund, Source: Business India Magazine, Date: December 2019 to January 2020

https://www.unicornivc.com/equity/pdf/uiv-business-india.pdf

“From the first fund, some of the clear winners have already emerged, such as Open bank, Smartcoin, Sequretek, Pharmarack and neuroequilibrium,” adds majumdar. “at the same time, the fund has also backed a few business ideas in their nascent stages, like Genrobotics, a robotic machine to eliminate manual scavenging and Openapp, an ai-based smart locking solutions company”.

Title: Anil Joshi of Unicorn India Ventures in conversation with Shantanu Prakash | Business Class, Source: Founder India, Date September 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=256&v=F3SajdavE1M&feature=emb_logo

Anil Joshi shared his journey from working in Panipat to launching Unicorn India Venture. Discussion revolved around the key parameters that affect the success of a business , most important being managing cash flows, leadership skills. Anil also pointed out there is great potential in tier 2 and 3 cities of the countries and they do equally well when compared to a start up from a tier 1 city. Further they went ahead discussing that there is more foreign capital inflow in the country in VC reason being people are not aware of existence of such an asset class, but Anil said thing are changing though at a slow pace.

Title: Why Unicorn India Ventures Feels Venture Debt Is The Missing Piece In Indian Startup Ecosystem, Source: Inc42, Date: November 2017

https://inc42.com/features/unicorn-india-venture-debt-startup/

 Sudip mentions, “There are two important criteria that we will be looking at. First, has the startup started generating cash flows? It’s very important because you come with a concept but if the concept can’t generate money, you can’t pay debt with it. We need to be sure that they have started generating cash flows.  Number two, it gives us great comfort when we know that some other venture fund has already invested in the equity of that enterprise. We will by and large look at these two factors before we deploy our funds in a startup.”

“With these tenets in mind, the Unicorn India Venture Debt fund will look to invest in about 10 companies a year, with an average ticket size of $3 Mn (INR 20 Cr). The fund will have an investment horizon of 7-8 years and will aim for a blended ROI somewhere in the range of 20%. “The fund will be making its first close of about $30.89  Mn (INR 200 Cr) in March 2018.”

More importantly, unlike its equity fund raised in 2015, the sector-agnostic venture debt fund will be used to back later-stage startups that have a certain amount of cash flow. It will primarily look at international SaaS companies as well as those in the electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM) area.”

Analyst questions

  • What is the framework you look into while making an investment? What is the matrix that you use while investing in B2B company?
  • What happen when a company fails, how do make a judgement about whether the company is going to fail? What is the message that you would like to give to the founders of such businesses?
  • What is the widely used exit strategy in India? Also tell us about the exit strategy deployed by one of your investee company?
  •  What are parameters that you look for while investing in case of debt fund? How is it different from the equity fund?
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