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Unicorn eyes old economy HNIs to invest in new-age start-ups

The fund partners are now conducting road shows in places where such people reside and for whom investing in start-ups has remained a no-go area.

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Bhaskar Majumdar
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Unicorn India Ventures, a Mumbai-based venture capital fund, has initiated an unconventional way of raising funds for their recently launched Rs 100 crore start-up fund.

Rather than raising money from mostly institutions and high net worth individuals (HNIs) from the tech world, Unicorn, promoted by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar, is reaching out to monied people from the old economy, most of whom were so far happy investing in gold, land and in equities.

The fund partners are now conducting road shows in places where such people reside and for whom investing in start-ups has remained a no-go area.

"We have targeted cities like Kolkata and Ahmedabad, reaching out to HNIs who have traditionally invested in equity shares, land, inter-corporate deposits and other traditional asset classes but have started taking keen interest in evaluating start-ups as an asset class," Joshi told dna after an investors' meet in Kolkata.

Out of the Rs 100 crore corpus, the fund has already raised Rs 40 crore from family offices across India, about Rs 6 crore has come from Sidbi while some more are likely to flow from other institutional investors. Balance would be raised from individual investors from these cities.

"So far, we have raised about Rs 1-2 crore from each of the investors, family offices as well as corporates. The average IRR that investors can expect is about 35%," Joshi said.

The fund has already made a beginning with investments, putting in about a crore of rupees each in four ventures: Roader, an on-demand intercity cab aggregator using tech platform; Inc42, a media business working towards promoting start-up ecosystem; PharmaRack, an application that creates information flow across supply chain from drug companies to dealers to pharmacies; and Vanity Cube, a full stack marketplace for beauty salon and spa services on a mobile platform.

"We plan to build a portfolio of 25-30 companies in the first three years, which translates into 8-10 investments in a year in the range of Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1 crore. Beyond seed funding, we are also open to follow-on financing to the extent of Rs 5-10 crore in future financing rounds," Bhaskar Majumdar, managing partner of Unicorn said.

Started in 2015 by Joshi and Majumdar, Unicorn aims to invest in early stage start-ups.

Joshi previously headed Mumbai Angels network while Bhaskar has been investing in start-ups since 2008 as a prop investor through a separate entity. Anil has been a part of closing around 60 start-up deals and was directly involved in closure of over 35.

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