Bessemer Venture Partners Raises $350 Mn India Fund to Back Next-Generation of Startups

• Second dedicated India fund builds on Bessemer’s nearly two-decade-long presence in the country and reinforces its commitment to supporting technology and innovation-driven businesses
• The fund will focus on early-stage startups and support them through subsequent growth stages
• Bessemer will focus on investments across AI, SaaS, fintech, digital health, consumer, and cybersecurity.

Bessemer Venture Partners today announced the close of $350 million in capital for its second dedicated India fund, reinforcing the firm’s long-standing commitment to backing founders in the region as they build enduring companies.

The new fund will enhance the firm’s focus on early-stage investments, across AI-enabled services and SaaS, fintech, digital health, direct-to-consumer brands, and cybersecurity. Bessemer has a long-standing history of partnering with companies early and supporting them through their growth. More than 80 percent of its investments in India over the last five years have been in early-stage companies.

Speaking on the fund raise, Vishal Gupta, Partner and Managing Director of the firm’s Bangalore office said, “This fund deepens our commitment to India’s startup ecosystem as we continue backing the next generation of entrepreneurs building technology-led businesses. We remain focused on identifying and investing in founders who are driving innovation, solving complex challenges, and building market-defining companies. Beyond providing capital, we bring deep sector expertise, a global network, and hands-on support to help founders navigate their growth journeys and scale sustainably.”

Bessemer Partner Anant Vidur Puri added, "India is at the forefront of the AI-driven transformation, with founders building domestic as well as globally-competitive businesses across enterprise software, fintech, and consumer technology. As AI adoption accelerates, we see immense opportunities for innovation, and this fund allows us to back entrepreneurs shaping the next phase of India’s digital economy."

Bessemer first established its India presence nearly two decades ago in 2006 and has since invested in more than 80 startups in the country. The partnership’s strategy centres around being patient, long-term partners to visionary founders from the early stages. The firm has a history of taking a roadmap-driven investment approach that enables its investors to build conviction in emerging areas across industries before they become obvious, and better help founders navigate evolving industry landscapes. This approach has led Bessemer to invest early in shifts in the market like the onset of the mobile revolution, India’s digital infrastructure, and its healthcare revolution, resulting in investments such as Urban Company, Perfios, and Medi Assist.

The firm’s first dedicated India fund backed notable startups including Boldfit, MoveInSync, Pepper Content, Shopdeck, Vetic, and Zopper, while its broader portfolio includes category leaders like BigBasket, Livspace, Perfios, Swiggy, and Urban Company. The firm has also seen nine IPOs within its India portfolio.

With investment teams positioned across five countries, Bessemer is a globally integrated platform that is committed to supporting innovative startups and fostering the next generation of industry leaders.

About Bessemer Venture Partners

Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer’s global portfolio has included ServiceTitan, Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast and has more than $18 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer’s storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio).

SpiderG Raises Seed Funding; Indiabulls to Raise Up to $150M; Swiggy To Raise $12M & More

E-Invoicing Startup SpiderG Raises Seed Round of Funding

Pune-based Gladiris Technologies that owns and operates its free e-invoicing app SpiderG, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a group of investors.

Rahul Kirloskar, chairman at Kirloskar Pneumatic; Fusion Tech Ventures, the investment arm of Praj’s Pramod Chaudhary; Adi Saravanan, president of Allsec Securities; Pravin Dongre, CEO at Glencore Grain India and Mahendra Doshi of LPK Securities participated in this round of funding.

Gladiris Technology was founded in 2013 by Ashwani Rathore, Prakash Nair and Harshal Ingale, currently serves around 350 businesses and plans to scale the count up to 20,000 in a year. SpiderG also plans to take its revenue from INR 1.5 Cr to INR 22 Cr by the end of this year.

Indiabulls to Raise Up to $150M

Indiabulls Alternative Investments Ltd plans to raise up to $150 million for a new fund from non-resident Indian (NRI) investors based in West Asia, Asia-Pacific and Europe. India Opportunities Fund, a real estate-focused, alternative investment fund (AIF), allows NRI investors, along with persons of Indian origin (PIOs) and other foreign investors, to participate in domestic real estate investments. It plans to initially raise Rs.500 crore and raise an additional Rs.500 crore in case of higher-than-expected demand. The fund has a tenure of four years, extendable by a year, as per DealStreetAsia report.

Bessemer Ventures May Invest $12M in Swiggy

US-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners is in advanced talks to invest around $12 million in food-delivery company Swiggy, as per ET report. If the deal goes through, it will value the company at around $200 million. Last month, it was reported that Swiggy has raised an additional $7 million from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, DST Global and Accel Partners, valuing the company at $130 million. In January, the Bangalore-based company had raised $30 million in Series C round of funding from New York-based Harmony Partners and Singapore-based RB investments. The raised funding will help Swiggy compete strongly with restaurant listing company Zomato, which entered the food delivery business last year, as well as the Sequoia Capital-backed Roadrunnr-TinyOwl combine and Rocket Internet portfolio company Foodpanda.

Rubique to Raise Up to $15M

Online loan facilitator Rubique is in the process of raising $10-15 million in the second round of funding and aims to close with about $25 million by the end of 2016. The Mumbai-based company plans to use the amount to strengthen its technology backbone and focus on distribution and promotion to reach out to a larger base of customers, as per ET reported.

It plans to expand to Ahmedabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Chandigarh, after having established its presence in Mum bai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad.

The company, which counts Kalaari Capital, along with YourNest Angel Fund, Globvestor and Dexter Angel Circle as its investors, had received $3 million in its first round of funding last year.

Cyclops Medtech Raises Seed Round

Cyclops Medtech has raised an undisclosed seed round of funding from CP Bothra, Chairman and Managing Director of Medreich Pharma, a generic drug manufacturing major which was recently acquired by Japan’s Meiji Seika. The team had earlier raised a pre-seed round of funding for basic prototype development from a leading surgeon in Benglauru.

The startup was founded by a team of doctors and a serial entrepreneur — DR Srinivas, Ravi Nayar, and Niranjan Subbarao. The startup focuses on building and manufacturing diagnostic solutions for episodic neurological events like vertigo with the use of eye-tracking technology.

With the newly raised funding, the team is now set to build and manufacture the product. The team has already tied up with a manufacturing facility Vinayas, based out of Mysore.

Infibeam to Invest $9M in Payment Gateway Firm CCAvenue

Infibeam has signed an agreement with payment gateway firm CCAvenue to invest up to Rs 60 crore ($8.9 million) in the company. Last month, Infibeam announced to back the company with Rs 45 crore ($6.7 million) through its wholly-owned subsidiary NSI Infinium Global Pvt Ltd. Following that, the company has announced today that it has increased the investment size now as earlier it was an intimation amount.

The company was founded in 2010 by Vishal Mehta, a former Amazon executive, Infibeam offers cloud-based e-commerce platform service in B2C and B2B verticals.

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