Early-stage venture capital (VC) firm Unicorn India Ventures (UIV) on Tuesday announced the first close of its Fund III at Rs 225 crore. The firm is targeting Rs 1,000 crore in its final close, expected to happen by March 2024. 

The VC said it plans to build a portfolio of 25 startups across sectors like climate tech, agritech, space tech, aerospace, and semiconductor ecosystem with Fund III. 

UIV will invest a first cheque of around $1-2 million in startups using only 20% of the fund and then use the balance to further invest in the follow-on rounds of the ‘winners’ in its portfolio.

Unicorn India Ventures was started in 2016 by Majumdar and Anil Joshi. To strengthen the management team, industry veteran Bikram Mahajan has been appointed Partner, and Kamlesh Ahuja has been appointed VP (Fund Operations). Mahajan will focus on portfolio management and growth of the investee companies, while Ahuja will look after compliance and back-office administration for all Funds.

The VC’s Fund I, launched in 2016 with a corpus of Rs 100 crore, invested in 17 companies, including fintech unicorn Open Bank. From its first fund, UIV returned more than 2X cash with assets worth 6X still under management and an internal rate of return of 60% on a year-on-year basis. 

After the success of its first fund, the VC firm launched a Rs 300 crore Fund II in 2020, investing in 20 companies, including Gamerji, Probus, Daalchini, and Finin.

Unicorn India Ventures now has an active portfolio of over 35 startups, most of which are already profitable or have a clear path to achieving break-even. Over 60% of these startups are based in emerging regional hubs like Kochi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad.