Venture capital firm Cornerstone has launched its second fund with a corpus of $200 million. Business-to-Business (B2B) focused firm made the announcements adding the investments will be available with a greenshoe option.
The ticket sizes of the funds will be ranging from $5 million to $15 million. The firm said it is open to invest across sectors but focus will be on early growth-stage Venture Capital bets.
Apart from capital, the fund will provide entrepreneurs with access to a large enterprise customer ecosystem, access to strategic funding from next-round investors among other support, The Business Standard reported.
Through this newly lanched fund, the investment firm will focus on backing emerging B2B technology opportunities across software platforms and marketplaces operatig in diverse sectors such as financial services and insurance, retail, consumer goods and e-commerce, distribution and supply chain, healthcare products and services, and sector-agnostic core technology innovations.
Cornerstone launched its first fund in mid-2019 with a size of approximately $50 million, which is now deployed across 21 portfolio companies primarily focused on B2B Enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) business models.
The fund, backed by the Government of India’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Fund of Funds (managed by SIDBI) and the Self-Reliant India Fund managed by State Bank of India (SBI) – the largest bank in India, has since witnessed over a four-fold growth in the cumulative revenue base across the portfolio. Additionally, it has contributed to the creation of over 1,000 direct jobs and over 15,000 indirect livelihoods.
“Our second fund builds on the success of Fund-I, and underscores our commitment to supporting emerging B2B Enterprise Tech opportunities. We aim to back some of the largest value creators in this space of ‘Next Generation Enterprise Technologies’, whether building in India for the world or building exclusively for the domestic market,” said Abhishek Prasad, Managing Partner at Cornerstone Ventures.
“We particularly like innovations that catalyse core business processes, engage multiple stakeholders across the value chain, thus building multiple revenue streams, and have demonstrable account-level profitability. Such businesses do not require capital for sustenance but really to drive growth,” he added.
