Prime Venture Partners’ Fund IV closes at US$120 million (INR 900 crore)

Oversubscribed fund will be used to Back Early-stage Technology Startups

Bengaluru, 24 February, 2022: Prime Venture Partners , an early-stage India-focused VC fund, today announced the final close of its fourth fund of US$120 million.The fund was oversubscribed and has exceeded its target of $100 million in commitments and will invest in disruptive technology companies across FinTech, EdTech, HealthTech, Consumer Internet and Global SaaS. Prime will continue to focus on being the first institutional investor, maintaining its high-conviction and deep-support investing model in early-stage technology startups. In addition to prior focus areas, the firm has expanded its portfolio into new areas, notably, EVs, B2B, Web3 and Gaming infrastructure platforms.

With this closing, the new fund takes the total capital under management across all Prime VP funds to over $250 million. In addition to existing investors, Fund IV is backed by International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, a top-tier university endowment, a top tier Fund of Funds and several global technology entrepreneurs, reflecting the strong performance of Prime VP’s earlier funds.

With a highly selective and active involvement strategy, more than 90%ofcompanies backed by Prime VP at the seed stage go on to raise follow-on capital led by marquee investors in India and globally within 18 months and achieve strong product market fit, follow-on rounds, profitability or exits with meaningful outcomes to founders. As per the Cambridge Associates benchmarks, all of Prime VP’s funds are in the top decile of all global VC funds of their respective vintages. Funds I to III are committed across 32 companies spanning sectors such as Fintech, Healthcare, SaaS, Education and Logistics. Prime VP’s Fund I recently delivered a strong, top-decile (4x+) return to all its Limited Partners.

Over the past decade, Prime VP has been the first institutional investor and built-up one of the richest portfolios of Fintech startups including Niyo, India’s leading savings-led Universal Neobank with several million users and marquee investors, Ezetap, a leading POS acceptance platform with more than 400,000 merchant outlets, Freo (Moneytap), the leading consumer-credit-led Neobank, KredX,the leading invoice discounting platform, OTO,the first two-wheeler leasing solution and many others. Additionally, during the past 12 months, three of Prime’s early fintech investments were acquired by marquee brands. These include the acquisition of business expense, payments and travel management platform Happay by Cred for $180 Million, financial operations startup Recko by Stripe, and retail-technology startup Perpule by Amazon.

Other notable investments by Prime include Quizizz,an ed-tech platform used by more than 100 Million students in 120 countries, PlanetSpark - one of the fastest growing education plays in the language and communications sector, Sunstone- an innovator in new-age MBA programs, MFine - India’s leading telemedicine and home diagnostics provider, MyGate -the market share leader in (gated) community operating systems, Dozee -a pioneer in remote patient monitoring solutions, WheelsEye - an inter-city truck logistics company, Bolt - India’s leading EV charging network and many others. Prime also has a rich portfolio of SaaS startups including Zuper, provider of intelligent field service management software and SurveySparrow in the customer experience management space.

Prime VP’s diverse team has decades of combined personal experience as founders and investors and brings Silicon Valley style professionalism to venture investing. Prime’s USP to founders is the approach of deep teamwork between the founders and all partners, Amit Somani, Shripati Acharya and Sanjay Swamy, bringing the combined wealth of their experience to each portfolio company. Prime’s partners actively work with the founders on organization design, team building, product reviews, go-to-market planning, metrics definition and tracking, PR and finance support, future fundraising, to exit planning, Prime VP’s model has worked in delivering tremendous value to founders throughout their journey but notably during the very early, formative stages of the company, with an exceptional success rate.

Supporting Quote:

Amit Somani, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners

“We greatly appreciate and are humbled by the unambiguous support and confidence of our long-time LPs and new investors, which allowed us to complete an oversubscribed fundraise. With Fund IV, Prime VP is well-positioned to back a new group of category-defining technology startups and inspiring entrepreneurs in India. Fund IV is already off to an exciting start and we couldn’t be more optimistic about the depth of the entrepreneurial talent and increasing level of ambition among the founders in India.”

About Prime Venture Partners

Prime Venture Partners is an early-stage VC fund managed by partners with deep experience both as entrepreneurs and operators. Led by Amit Somani, Sanjay Swamy & Shripati Acharya, the fund is focused on building disruptive product companies out of India, and addresses a much needed gap in the Indian startup ecosystem - by bringing a combination of first-hand entrepreneurial experience, operating expertise and meaningful capital. Prime is a high conviction, high support investor and believes in backing star teams with differentiated ideas. Prime has a rich portfolio of category creating companies including Quizizz, MyGate, MFine, PlanetSpark, MyGate, Dozee, NiYO, Sunstone Eduversity, KredX, WheelsEye and more. For more information, please visit www.primevp.in .