Arkam Ventures is courting its second fund, aiming for $180 million, nearly doubling the size of its maiden fund, as the Indian venture capital firm gears up to double down on the expanding ‘middle India’ opportunity.
The firm’s partners said in an interview that they are hopeful to retain support from high-profile international institutional investors and family offices for the new fund. Key investors in Arkam’s first fund included British International Investment, SIDBI and Evolvence.
Arkam, whose startup portfolio includes Jar, Smallcase, Kreditbee, and Jai Kisan, seeks to write larger early-stage checks with the new fund to secure bigger stake in emerging companies, said Bala Srinivasa (left in the lead picture), co-founder and managing director of the fund, in a conversation with TechCrunch.
The deliberation on the new fund coincides with a period when VC firms are grappling with closing new funds, and in many instances, reducing the target size due to a slackened economy that has quelled the public markets in the preceding eighteen months.
This scenario contrasts the historical highs during the zenith of 2021 and early 2022 that saw scores of VC firms in India raise record size funds. Rahul Chandra, Arkam’s other co-founder and managing director, indicated that although …
