Top 15 Active VC Firms in India

ACTIVE VENTURE CAPITAL FIRMS INVESTING IN INDIAN STARTUPS

India is emerging as one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world. The business community across the globe appreciates India for a thriving startup ecosystem. Investors from all over the world are always hunting for Indian Startups as they see a tremendous growth opportunity here.

The significant hurdle, even for the brilliant startup idea, is the lack of funds. Therefore we have seen most of the successful startups facing curveballs in the initial stages.

Funding is a must for the smooth running and growth of any startup at every stage. Lack of funds is the reason many people are hesitant to start a new business. However, the millennial and graduates from top engineering, management, and other institutes with innovative ideas are inspiring many others.

Earlier bootstrapping and bank loans were the only forms of funding for startups and small businesses. With the advent of angel investors and VC firms in India startup ecosystem in India is flourishing. The investing firms are playing an essential role in the nurturing and growth of startups in India.

VC firms have funded Oyo Rooms, Flipkart, Bigbasket, Just Dial, Ola, and hundreds of other startups in India.

Here is the list of 15 Top VC firms operating in India.

If you are a new Startup or if you are planning to start a new business and looking for seed funding, then you must know these companies.

Sequoia Capital India

Sequoia Capital India is an affiliation of a US-based VC firm, Sequoia Capital. The VC firm is known to invest in innovative ideas in various fields. Sequoia funds the promising and daring startups at the early, seed, and also in the growth stage with a fixed investment structure for each of these stages.

Main Investment Domains: Energy, Mobile, Healthcare, Consumer Internet, Financial and Technology Startups

Startups Funded: BankBazaar, Dehaat, Grofers, JustDial, Zomato, Practo, Groupon, etc.

https://www.sequoiacap.com/

Nexus Venture Partners

Nexus Venture Partners is one of the top VC firms in India. It partners with exceptional entrepreneurs in the US and India.


The firm primarily invests early in the life of the company. The investment size ranges from USD 500K to 10 million in early-growth stage companies.

Main Investment Domains: Data Security, Mobile, Infrastructure, Bio Data Analytics, Agribusiness, Consumer and Business Services

Startups Funded: Zolostays, Craftsvilla, Unacademy, Snapdeal, Shopclues, etc.

https://nexusvp.com/

Chiratae Ventures

Chiratae Ventures India Advisors (Formerly IDG Ventures India Advisors) is a leading India-focused technology venture capital fund. The Company offers investment management, advisory, and other related services

The VC firm has over 15 years in startup funding, with a portfolio of over 200 companies in various sectors.

Main Investment Domains: Mobile, Software Products, Engineering-Medical Devices, Technology-based Consumer Services

Startups Funded: Curefit, Fintso, Kristal AI, FirstCry, Yatra, Lenskart, Myntra, Zivame, etc.

 Saif Partners

SAIF Partners is one of the leading private equity firms that is funding startups and companies in Asia. The primary areas of focus include Information Technology, Internet, Mobile, Consumer Products & Services, Healthcare, Cleantech, Education, Modern Agriculture, Financial Services and Manufacturing.

SAIF Partners, founded in 2001, today is one of the successful VC firms in the Asian region. It currently manages over $3.5 billion in capital, with over 100 investments since its inception.

Main Investment Domains: Information Technology, Internet, Mobile, Consumer Products & Services, Healthcare, Cleantech, Education, Modern Agriculture, Financial Services and Manufacturing

Top Startups Funded: Acko, Flipkart, Camp K12, Aye, BookMyShow, Chaayos, ClearTax, Meesho etc.

http://www.saifpartners.com/

Matrix Partners

Matrix Partners is a US-based VC firm that invests in seed and early-stage companies and startups in India and the United States.


Matrix Partners is a US-based venture capital firm that invests in seed and early-stage startups. The firm has the philosophy of being “Founders First” i.e., not only they invest capital in high-growth potential companies but also helps them in valuable domains like hiring, strategic partnerships, etc.

Main Investment Domains: Software, Communications, Semiconductors, Data storage, Internet or Wireless, E-Commerce, enterprise, Fintech and other sectors

Top Startups Funded: Limeroad, Zupee, Camp K12, Housejoy, FIITJEE, Ola, mSwipe etc.

http://www.matrixpartners.in/

Helion Venture Partners

Helion Venture Partners is an early to mid-stage, India focused venture fund. The fund mainly invests in technology-powered and consumer service businesses in sectors like Outsourcing, Internet, Mobile, Technology Products, Retail Services, Healthcare, Education, and Financial Services.
Helion Venture focuses only in India with offices in Bengaluru and Gurgaon.

If it finds any promising idea, Helion can invest up to $10 Million in a company with revenue of less than $10 Million.

Main Investment Domains: Outsourcing, Internet, Mobile, Technology Products, Retail Services, Healthcare, Education and Financial Services

Top Startups Funded: Make My Trip, Red Bus, YepMe, PubMatic, TAXI for Sure, Komli

 http://www.helionvc.com/

Accel Venture

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. It partners with exceptional founders with unique insights, from inception through all phases of growth.

Accel Partners, works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments.

Apart from its offices in Palo Alto, California, and San Francisco, California, London, Accel has a presence in developing countries like China and India.

Accel Partners focuses only on internet technology companies. In India, Accel could invest from $500K to $50 Million, given the nature of the company.

Top Investment Domains: Internet technology companies

Top Startups Funded: QTalk, Curefit, Flipkart, BabyOye, Book My Show, Myntra, Common Floor, etc

https://www.accel.com/

Intel Capital India

Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, which is managing corporate venture capital global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of promising and innovative technology startups and companies.

Intel that makes processors also invests in companies with great potential. Intel Capital has invested over $11 billion in over 1000+ companies around 50+ countries.

Intel could give you anything between $1 million to $100 Million depending upon the company. Around the world, it invests up to $500 million per year. It invests in companies like research and development, labs, mobile, digital media, etc.

Main Investment Domains: Technology Startups that are offering hardware, software, and services, targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous technology, data center and cloud, 5G, next-generation computer, semiconductor manufacturing, and other technologies.

Top Startups Funded: IndiaMart, Hungama, PolicyBazaar, SnapDeal etc.

www.intelcapital.com

Blume Ventures

Blume is an early-stage venture fund that backs startups with both funding as well as active mentoring. The primary investment domains of Blume include Indian tech-led startups impacting large markets. It aims to become a leading venture fund in India by nurturing and creating value for India's brightest young startups.

Main Investment Domains: Ventures with a strong tech spine, i.e., businesses backed by code or intellectual property, Tech Startups

Top Startups Funded: Pitshop, Healthassure, Exotel, Printo, Carbon Clean Solutions, etc

https://blume.vc/

Inventus Capital Partners

Inventus Capital Partners is a venture firm that invests in technology-powered companies intending to grow its revenue ten times in just two years. Inventus Capital typically leads the initial round with $1M to $2M and invests up to $5M as businesses grow.

The company is always keen to back entrepreneurs with innovative ideas in the fields like the internet and media, technology, and knowledge-based services to address a variety of attractive end markets in India.

Main Investment Domains: Embedded Software, mobile, E-commerce, financial, internet, and healthcare, etc.

Top Startups Funded: EDreams, Savaari, RedBus, Poshmark, Policy Bazaar etc

https://inventuscap.com/

Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer, founded in 1911, is a USA based Venture Firm, which is an early-stage investor in India. Bessemer Venture has invested in dozens of Indian companies, including Bigbasket and Swiggy, Livspace, PharmEasy, and many other startups.

Main Investment Domains: BVP is an active investor in the tech startups community in India.

Top Startups Funded: Swiggy, Livspace, PharmEasy, Bigbasket, Snap Deal, Motilal Oswal etc.

https://www.bvp.com/

Canaan Partners

Canaan Partners, a global venture capital firm, has been investing in India since 2000. An early-stage venture capital firm, Canaan is investing in visionaries with transformative ideas.

The firm could invest $50k to $50 Million depending upon the idea and vision of the company.

Main Investment Domains: Healthcare, Internet Technology & E-Commerce, etc

Top Startups Funded: Bharat Matrimony, Naaptol, Car Trade, UnitedLex, and Loyalty Rewardz

https://www.canaan.com/

Eight Roads 

Eight Roads (Formerly Fidelity Growth Partners India) is a subsidiary of Fidelity International Limited. The Venture Capital Fund is investing in Indian companies since 2008. Eight Roads support innovative and ambitious entrepreneurs to build bold and meaningful businesses.

Main Investment Domains: Healthcare, Real Estate, Consumer and manufacturing companies, etc.

Top Startups Funded: Cipla, Yebhi, BankBazaar, Net Magic etc.

https://eightroads.com/

Norwest Venture Partners

Norwest Venture Partners is a leading Silicon-Valley based venture capital and growth equity investment firm. Norwest has offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco, with subsidiaries in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India and Herzelia, Israel. Since its inception, NVP has invested in more than 600 companies. The VC invests in early to late-stage companies across a wide range of sectors with a focus on consumer, enterprise, and healthcare.

Main Investment Domains: Telecommunications, Internet, Financial, Consumer, Enterprise, and healthcare, etc.

Top Startups Funded: Veritas Finance, Swiggy, Indus Ind, Komli, etc.

https://www.nvp.com/

India Angel Network

Indian Angel Network (IAN) is a Venture Capital Firm formed by primarily Indian angel investors to fund early-stage startups. The company has started international operations and has set up an office in London. The members of the Network are leaders in the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem as they have had vast operational experience as CEOs or a background of creating new and successful ventures. The members include Ajai Chowdhry, Rajan Anandan, and Anand Ladsairya.

Main Investment Domains - Education, Healthcare, QSR, E-Commerce, Gaming, Semiconductor, Robotics, Manufacturing, etc

Top Startups Funded: PregBuddy and SuperProfs Pretty Secrets, Stayzilla, Box 8, Web Engage etc

https://www.indianangelnetwork.com/

The Startups and companies should also understand that getting funds from VC firms is not an easy job. Therefore, before you approach them for funds, make sure that you have a business plan and a promising idea that you can present before them with confidence. In addition, you need to do your homework well and present a convincing case for funding requirements.


Want to get startup funding but don't know how? You can get in touch us if you need any assistance in connecting with the VC firms. 

Zomato buys Grofers

Recently, The Brand Global team has reported that Zomato and Grofers would be delivering essential items in a partnership during the national lockdown. Our team also notified that the online companies are hiring thousands of people to cater to the spike in demand amid lockdown.

The ET has reported now that the food delivery platform Zomato is in talks to buy the Softbank backed online grocery startup, Grofers.


The merger between the two entities will be a significant consolidation move in India’s consumer internet sector. The all-stock deal is expected to close at approximately $750M. 

SoftBank, the Japanese Vision Fund, which has the largest stake in Grofers, may further invest around $100-200 million in the merged entity.

Uber, in which SoftBank has invested considerable amount had in February, sold its India food delivery business UberEats to Zomato.

In just a few months, this would be another significant acquisition by Zomato after Uber eats
In January this year, Zomato announced that it had secured $150M in fresh funding from Ant Financial, which is a subsidiary of Chinese firm Alibaba.

Zomato is currently valued at around $3.2 billion, while Grofers was at $650M in December 2019.

Zomato - Indian restaurant aggregator and food delivery startup

Founders - Deepinder Goyal, Pankaj Chaddah
Founding Year – 2008
Location - DLF Phase V, Gurugram, India
Website - https://www.zomato.com/ncr

Grofers - Indian online grocery delivery service

Founders – Albinder Dhindsa, Saurabh Kumar
Founding Year – 2013
Location – Gurugram
Website - https://grofers.com/


In the Indian Online Grocery segment, the merged entity is going to give a fierce competition to BigBasket, which is one of the most prominent players in this segment. BigBasket had earlier explored the possibility of a potential merger with Grofers, but the talks failed. Even Amazon held some rounds of negotiations with BigBasket, but that could not materialize.

COVID-19 Impact: Relevance of 4Ps of Marketing in Business Amid COVID-19

Covid 19 and Marketing 

India has been under lockdown since March 25, and it will now continue till May 3. The number of Coronavirus cases in India crossed 32,000 on April 30, 2020 and more than 1000 people have died until now.

Every business big or small has been hit by COVID- 19 and the stock markets across the globe have crashed. Major world economies including India are bearing the brunt of lockdown. The GDP growth is declining and the economists are even predicting that the world may go into recession.

Further, the economists are still trying to analyze the exact impact of Covid-19 on the world economy. However, they are sure that the pandemic is going to give a hard hit to the economy. Moreover, it is also uncertain how long it will take to revive the economy as the condition is still volatile and the world hasn’t recovered from Corona yet.

Even if the virus slows down the businesses are going to struggle for well over a year because they will have to make up for their losses. The companies and the marketers are trying their best to adapt to the situation. During the challenging times, they need to make sure that brands remain in a positive light. The approach towards advertising need to be changed to ensure long term consumer trust and loyalty.

How to use the 4Ps of Marketing amid Covid-19 

The COVID-19 outbreak has affected the businesses and made a big dent in the revenues. That doesn’t mean a marketer lose all the hopes and stop the marketing activities. Marketing managers need to remain motivated during this time and keep on promoting the brands. This is a time when marketers can come up with innovative campaigns so that their brand is registered in the minds of the people.

Product

Customizing products according to the market needs is very difficult in the challenging times. Amid Covid-19 the marketers can think of making some changes that are acceptable and can be implemented to best serve the customers and communities without having a negative impact in the future.
There was a huge impact on the businesses of Swiggy, Zomato, Flipkart, Bigbasket, Amazon and many other online companies due to lockdown. Amid lockdown, only the essential items were allowed to be delivered at home. These players immediately shifted the gear and took permission to deliver the essential items like vegetables and groceries. They are effectively making use of their delivery infrastructure and witnessing a surge in the revenue even at the time when other companies are struggling.
The companies are also helping the government in reducing the supply chain burden.

Place

The Corona Virus has also drastically changed the way buyers are approaching the businesses. There are no physical meetings or contact between the two.
Marketers are designing ways to interact with customers keeping in mind the safety and social distancing aspect, and deliver what customers want and need
The companies should start using AI-enabled chatbots options and to solve queries customer queries. Furthermore, giving a virtual demonstration of your products instead of sending a representative at home is a better idea amid Covid-19.
The training providers and educational institutes can use the online platforms for their trainings and courses.
Country Delight- a Gurgaon based Dairy Startup, is sending the flowing message daily to its customers- “Dear Customer, Please help us keep you safe with 100% contact-less delivery. Your delivery partner has sanitized their hands and has a normal temperature of 97.3 at 4:00 am today, Thanks.”- Team Country Delight

Price

Pic Credit: Allie on Unsplash

The people are already living in fear and are very cautious while spending or purchasing anything during the pandemic. Increasing your product price to take advantage of the situation is not going to help your brand. Similarly offering a lot of discounts is also not good for the health of your company. The price adjustment if needed can only be done in conjunction with other departments like operations and finance. You may feel the need of giving some discounts to your clients.
Some companies have waived off the shipping or delivery charges. Companies like Byju’s and Vedantu’s are giving free subscriptions till lockdown. Similarly, some matrimony apps are also offering free subscriptions during this period.

Promotion

Promotion is all about the act of communicating the values and benefits of your products to your customers. Managers use various methods of promotion to make their brand visible in the market. Promotion in a normal scenario includes direct marketing, sales promotion, advertising, and personal selling to persuade customers to your business.
Due to lockdown, there is an over 80% increase in social media usage and internet browsing. The TV viewership has also seen a similar surge. The advertising cost is also all-time low these days. Marketing managers need to identify the medium that will best suit their products. They need to take advantage of those mediums to engage their audiences.
Organizations need to assess not only the tactics or mediums they use to engage their audiences and deploy their marketing strategy but also the context of the messages they're transmitting via those channels. The promotional campaigns also need to be carefully designed keeping in mind what your consumers want to hear from you in those messages.
Many travel companies are requesting their consumers to simply postpone and not cancel their vacation giving a message that they are badly hit by Corona.
Some health drink companies, Multivitamin manufactures are focusing on more immunity development amid Covid-19 as a person with strong immunity has more chances to fight corona.

Conclusion
There is a need to reassess and readjust the four P’s of Marketing during the Corona crisis. Certainly, the companies are facing the heat due to lockdown. The marketing managers have a big responsibility to respond to these business challenges and pain points. They need to understand and adjust to the needs to find creative solutions to tackle the situation.

These 4 Ps of Marketing are very helpful when it comes to running a business. Under this unprecedented situation, the marketing managers need to rise above the storm to avoid the pitfalls. Hence the circumstances, if not handled properly can make these 4Ps Painful, Panicky, Puzzled, and Pathetic


Since everybody is working remotely, marketing budgets need to be planned accordingly by the managers.