Venture Capital Firm Saama Capital raises $100 Mn for fourth round

Even though the company could have raised more than $100 Mn, the limits on the fund are a part of publicly announced belief of the company. Lilani had said “People like the discipline we have on size. We have always stayed in the $50-75 million range and we have publicly told our LPs we will never go over $100 million of fund ever.”

As the company continues its venture into new startups with its fourth fund, the company has backed about 10 companies between 2014 and 2016, including cold-pressed juice maker Raw Pressery, sauce and condiments startup Veeba Foods, online lender LendingKart, and artificial intelligence-driven travel assistant startup Mezi.

According to Inc42’s Indian Tech Startup Funding Report, over 302 VC firms participated in 650 deals in 2017 alone and over 34 new startup fund launches were announced in India in the year 2017 with a combined corpus of $2.3 Bn.

For example, venture capital firm India Quotient marked the first close of its $50-$60 Mn new fund raising more than $30 Mn, Venture debt firm Alteria Capital announced the first close of its maiden venture debt fund with a corpus of $123 Mn and 1Crowd, an India-based early stage investment firm, announced the first close of its debut venture capital fund at $3.5 Mn.

Early stage investment firm Fireside Ventures closed its first fund with a corpus of $52.12 Mn, and it then aimed to invest in 20-25 consumer brand businesses from this fund over the next two to three years.