An early-stage venture capital fund 8i Ventures has announced the first close of its $50 million second fund. The fund has raised 50 per cent of its targeted AUM and achieved the first close of $25 million.
This round includes investments raised largely from family offices like Salgaocars and Kothari (DSP).
Founded in 2019 by Vikram Chachra and Vishwanath V, 8i Ventures scored one of the highest venture exits in India in April this year, when it partially exited a seed investment in its portfolio company–M2P, at a 36x multiple over two years.
Vikram Chachra, Founding Partner, 8i Ventures said, “We believe fintech is the single largest venture opportunity in India. Every single friction point in India’s financial economy is a potential billion-dollar start-up opportunity. Our key insight when we launched Fund I, was that consumer payments and commerce is a trillion-dollar opportunity. Since then, digital payments have swelled from $200 billion a year to $720 billion now. With Fund II, we have an added focus on B2B fintech and commerce—which we believe to be the next trillion-dollar market in India.”
“At 8i, we wrote the first cheque into several outliers that at inception were unobvious winners. That’s because we partnered with founders targeting under-served categories, ignored by incumbents/industry players. Collectively, our Fund I portfolio winners already process $18 billion of payments annually, while generating $100 million in gross profits, between them,” said Vishwanath V, General Partner, 8i Ventures.
For Fund II, the firm will follow the same thesis, but with larger ownership across our investments.
Their average ticket size from the second fund will be $1.5-2 million cheques, going up to $10 million across subsequent rounds. In terms of sectors, 8i Ventures remains focused on payments and commerce, with a special focus on B2B payments and new models of commerce that can make online buying accessible to larger Indian population.
The firm’s first fund is said to be up 270 per cent with a 100 per cent IRR in 3 years, driven by early-stage investments in companies like Slice, M2P and Blue Tokai. It has already returned 27 per cent of its capital back to investors.