Fireside Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focussed on consumer brands on Tuesday announced it has closed its first fund with a corpus of ₹340 crore, more than its set target of ₹300 crore. It targets to invest in 20-25 consumer brand businesses from this fund over the next two-three years.

Since the first close of its debut fund with commitments of ₹180 crore last May, Fireside has invested in 10 consumer brands across food and beverages, personal care and home products. Its current portfolio includes Yoga Bar, Samosa Singh, Goodness! Beverages, Design Café, Bombay Shaving Company, Mama Earth, Vahdam Teas, KWIK24, Magic Crate and Frog Bikes.

On the fund close, Kanwaljit Singh, Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures, said: “The rhythm of consumer brand businesses is unique and requires an investor with a different DNA. The union of digital proliferation and demand for consumer brands, especially from the millennial generation, is creating new opportunities and business models that will allow multiple new brands to be built in India more efficiently and in faster time frames. It is this trend in the consumer brand space that lights up Fireside Ventures. We see this as a big opportunity and stand committed to introduce, mentor and promote brands in this space.”

Fireside believes the new consumer class — the millennial shopper — is looking for values such as authenticity, clean labels, ethical sourcing and production, from their products. Millennials are attuned to spending on brands which are unique in catering to their personal preferences. The rise of these young brands can be attributed to the growing modern retail infrastructure and the emergence of the digital universe which is augmenting the discover and accessibility of such brands. In such a scenario, Singh said, the firm’s vision is to help build 25 iconic brands in the next 15 years.

The Fireside fund is anchored by marquee investors such as PremjiInvest, WestBridge Capital, Mariwala Family Office, Unilever Ventures, Emami, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Family Office, Sunil Munjal’s Hero Enterprise Investment Office and ITC.

The fund is led by Kanwaljit Singh, Vinay Singh and VS Kannan Sitaram, and provides early-stage capital — from seed to Series A — of ₹1-10 crore over two-three years. The portfolio companies will get access to ‘Fireside Circle’ comprising a strong fund team of consumer brand-building experts, deep domain specialist mentors, and a partner network which will help companies in areas such as brand building, distribution, manufacturing and digital marketing.