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

Bengaluru-based Venture Capital firm, Saama Capital has closed its fourth fund with a corpus of $100 Mn.

The SEC filing mentioned that the first sale for the fund took place on March 28, 2018. 59 LPs invested in the company’s fourth fund.

With its fourth fund, the company is expected to continue to focus on consumer brands, software and fintech segment, while writing larger cheques to its bets on early-stage investments. This will also allow the company to invest in the winning products of its portfolio.

In fact, Saama Capital was founded in 2011 by Ash Lilani and Suresh Shanmugham who were leading venture investments for Silicon Valley Bank in India. The venture capital firm had raised $54 million for its first fund when it was still under SVB Capital Partners. Then, in 2012, it raised $26 million for a second fund, followed by the third fund for which it raised $58 million.

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.