Prime is an investor in fintech startups like digital lending startup Freo (previously Moneytap), forex card distributor Niyo, community management platform MyGate, healthtech Dozee. Since inception the fund has ploughed around $200 million in domestic firms.
Sanjay Swamy, cofounder of Prime Venture Partners, told ET that the fund has received 80% commitments of the $100 million planned raise from global family offices, trusts, fund of funds and university endowments from across the US, Europe and the Gulf region.
“We are still actively investing from our fourth fund and the deployment of the latest fund will begin from the second half of this year,” he said.
The fresh corpus will be deployed significantly in the fintech sector, one of the core focus areas for the firm, along with startups operating in the data privacy space and financial services infrastructure.
Within fintechs, insurance and wealth management are the two areas which are exciting for us, Swamy added.
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“We also believe that there is a major opportunity for Indian startups looking to export their products and services as the global market is a big opportunity,” he told ET.Prime has clocked exits from data collection platform Tracxn through its public listing, Recko (acquired by US-based payment giant Stripe), employee benefit platform Happay( sold to Cred), offline payments firm Ezetap (acquired by Razorpay), and retail technology startup Perpule ( bought by Amazon).
The firm will continue to invest in startups at the early stages with an average funding amount of $2.5 to $3 million. A small amount of the capital will be kept aside for follow on rounds in larger portfolio firms.
On the lack of large growth-stage funding, Swamy said, “There is definitely a reallocation of assets among US investors to their own country, but I believe this will happen at the cost of other geographies and not India… there is enough interest in Indian technology play,” he said.
While the US-based family offices, endowment funds have been backing the India tech story, now European trusts and family offices are also committing monies to Indian venture capital firms.
Prime joins a list of other early-stage funds like Stellaris Venture Partners, Ivy Cap, Sorin Investments, which closed funds with the size of $150 million to $300 million in the past year.
