Z3Partners Announces Final Close of Fund at Rs 550 Crore

• Z3Partners has raised funds from marquee institutional investors like HDFC Life and SIDBI
• Z3Partners has already made 5 investments, of which DealShare has emerged as a unicorn
• Announces joining of Rishi Maheshwari as Managing Partner
• Z3Partners has built a reputation of #founderstrust backing the highest quality tech and digital entrepreneurs
• To Invest Rs. 50 – 80 crore at early-growth stage
• Plans to invest in 8 - 10 ‘early-growth’ companies in SaaS, Fintech, eCommerce, B2B Commerce, Agritech, Big Data, and Tech-enabled

India’s market leader in tech and digital investing Z3Partners has announced its final close of its Fund at Rs 550 crore. The Fund will primarily invest in 8 - 10 early-growth, digital and tech startups with a ticket size of Rs. 50 – 80 crore ($6 - 10 million). Z3Partners has already made 5 investments – cybersecurity startup Cyfirma, social e-commerce firm DealShare, agri-tech platform Gramophone, SaaS-based logistics management leader Shipsy, and AI-led celebrity engagement platform True-Fan. DealShare, had also turned Unicorn in 2022 after its $165 million Series E financing round.

Leading global and domestic institutions and family offices have participated in the Fund, including HDFC Life and SIDBI. The existing investor base will look to add immense strategic value to Z3Partners’ portfolio of leading start-ups.

Z3Partners, works as an investor-operator, provides immense value to its portfolio companies. The Fund closely engages with founders to help them refine their GTM and makes customer introductions to accelerate growth. The Fund also lends support from time to time in helping its portfolio companies with digital and product marketing strategy, and developing and retaining senior talent. The DNA of the Fund is to not just provide growth capital but get down in the trenches with the founders to help them build a long-term sustainable and profitable business.

Founded in 2019 by Gautam Patel, a pioneer in digital & tech investing, having invested in Companies like Bigbasket, MedGenome, OfBusiness, Pepperfry, etc., Z3Partners are a groundbreaking early-growth stage investor-operator that invests across early-growth companies in Series A / B stage. The Fund's core investment themes focus on SaaS, Fintech, eCommerce, B2B Commerce, Agritech, Big Data, Consumer-tech and all things Tech-enabled. With over 90 years of collective experience of investing and operating companies, including shaping companies into industry leaders, Z3Partners are true-pioneers in the Indian market.

Z3Partners also announces Rishi Maheshwari joining as Co-founder & Managing Partner. Rishi has over 18 years of investment management and investment banking experience across the U.S., India and Emerging Markets and has held several senior management and board positions in organisations locally and internationally.

Gautam Patel, Founder & Managing Partner says, “At Z3Partners, our vision is to identify the most disruptive and cutting edge startups and provide them with necessary support to grow into market leaders. The same philosophy is reflected across our LP based too, with market leaders like HDFC Life and SIDBI as our Fund investors; resulting in a final close well ahead of schedule. We are also delighted to welcome Rishi to Z3Partners. He and I invested in BigBasket together and are looking forward to building Z3Partners into the premium digital and tech investment platform of choice in India.''

Rishi Maheshwari, Co-founder & Managing Partner, says, “Through my time with Goldman Sachs in US, and private & public growth investing thereafter, I have had the privilege to build a strong understanding of, and supportive ecosystem across, both developed and emerging economies. Hence in my opinion, India continues to be an attractive investment destination coupled with the government’s focus on driving growth through digital transformation representing a unique and exciting time for venture investing. I am excited and look forward to working with Gautam in building Z3Partners into a world-class digital investment platform that backs the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

About Z3Partners

Z3Partners are India market leader in tech and digital investing. The firm’s experience spans 20 years of investing and operating tech and digital businesses. Along this journey, they have been instrumental in helping entrepreneurs build large and profitable businesses. Z3Partners works on the philosophy of being operating investors. They spend over 50% of their time with investee companies as their trustworthy partners. Z3Partners are known to back early trends, and discover teams and businesses that represent quality-at-scale and good governance, resulting in rewarding their investors with consistent and noteworthy investment returns.

Website: http://www.z3partners.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/z3partners-tech-fund/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Z3Partners

HDFC Life Invests in Digital and Tech focussed VC Fund of Z3Partners

• Aims to back highest quality tech and digital entrepreneurs
• Z3Partners is currently raising the Z3Partners Tech Fund of Rs. 500 crore
• The Fund announced its second close at Rs. 250 crore
• Invests Rs. 35 – 80 crore at early growth

HDFC Life, one of India’s leading life insurance companies has invested in Z3Partners’ new fund named ‘Z3Partners Tech Fund’ which is a tech and digital investment focused Venture Capital (VC) fund. The objective is to invest in and nurture the highest quality tech and digital entrepreneurs in India. Z3 Partners, which is currently raising this Fund of Rs. 500 crore, has alrady backed best quality startups like Cyfirma, DealShare, Gramophone, Shipsy, and True-Fan.

Z3Partners is founded by Gautam Patel whose prior investments have been BigBasket, MedGenome, OFBusiness, Pepperfry, etc. Z3Partners invests in market-leading tech and digital startups which are focused on exponential growth and proven unit-economics and are servicing large addressable markets by leveraging world class execution and disruptive tech solutions.

The Fund announced its second close of Rs. 250 crores last year and is on track to do the final close this year.

Gautam Patel, Managing Partner, Z3Partners, says, “HDFC Life is one of the most respected and credible financial institutions in India. Their high governance and quality standards reflect in every aspect of their business. We are excited to have HDFC Life onboard for this journey to invest in the best tech and digital companies that are backed by world-class entrepreneurs. We believe this endeavour will translate into providing support and leadership to the Indian startup ecosystem.”

Z3Partners invests in early growth digital and tech companies. The Z3Partners Tech Fund invests Rs. 35-80 crores. Given the operating backgrounds of the team at Z3Partners they work closely with their portfolio companies. With a Unicorn already in the portfolio (DealShare), Z3Partners is performing extremely well with an aim to build a portfolio of 8-10 companies. 

Z3Partners are India market leader in tech and digital investing. The firm’s experience spans 20 years of investing and operating tech and digital businesses. Along this journey, they have been instrumental in helping entrepreneurs build large and profitable businesses. Z3Partners work on the philosophy of operating investors. They spend over 50% of their time with investee companies as their trustworthy partners. Z3Partners are known to back early trends, and discover teams and businesses that represent quality-at-scale and good governance, resulting in rewarding Fund’s investors with consistent and notewohy investment returns.

Predictive Cyberthreat Visibility & Intelligence Platform CYFIRMA Raises Series A Funding

CYFIRMA, a predictive cyber-threat visibility and intelligence analytics platform company announced today they have raised Series A round of funding from Z3Partners, an early- growth Private Equity Fund that is known to discover nascent technology trends and support entrepreneurs in their journey towards market leadership. With this investment, Z3Partners joins Goldman Sachs and Zodius Capital as a shareholder of CYFIRMA. The Company has raised $8 million till date including the current round.

This new investment round comes just four months after CYFIRMA’s separation from Antuit Group in October 2019. This latest round of funding reaffirms CYFIRMA’s business model and strengthens its position as a fast-rising cybersecurity and threat intelligence player.

According to Gartner Inc., the global information security market is forecast to grow at a five-year CAGR of 8.7% to reach $188.8 billion in 20231. This new spending will be driven by regulations and increased awareness as organizations’ needs evolve to address more complex threats.

CYFIRMA’s threat intelligence platform is already in use by Fortune Top 500 companies. With the new funding, CYFIRMA will further capitalize on its position as a leader in the cyber visibility and threat intelligence category in Japan to expand into markets across Asia including India and the US.

The funds will be used to support the development roadmap of CYFIRMA’s cyber-intelligence analytics platform, adding functionalities that will enhance its predictive capabilities as well as building adjacent features that will complete the cybersecurity ecosystem.

“CYFIRMA has been disrupting the cybersecurity landscape since its inception - born out of the urgent need to help business leaders decipher relevant and critical threats in a sea of noise so that decisive actions can be taken to prevent massive brand and financial damages. Our unique way of looking at cyber threat analytics, gathering intelligence across deep and dark web as well as surface web to unravel motivations of threat actors and stop cyber-attack at its track has been a winning formula for many of our clients,” said Ritesh Kumar, Founder and CEO of CYFIRMA. “I’m glad Z3Partners share in our vision. Having the financial support of Z3Partners will accelerate our product engineering efforts, grow our team, and bring our innovative threat intelligence platform to new markets rapidly.”

“We are excited to partner with Kumar Ritesh and his team to build CYFIRMA into a dominant cyber threat analytics global player. CYFIRMA’s offering is well-timed with the rapidly increasing demand for quality threat intelligence to guide digital transformation and drive business results. The platform is a powerful solution to bring threat intelligence conversations into boardrooms across all industries and we look forward to collaborating with and supporting them as they work to build a great company in an exciting category,” said Gautam Patel, Managing Partner, Z3Partners.

Source: 1 Gartner Forecast Information Security and Risk Management, Worldwide, 2017-2023, 4Q19 Update

ABOUT Z3Partners

Z3Partners is a $100 million early-growth Private Equity Fund that has endorsed the India Technology & Digital market for over 20 years. Along this journey, Z3Partners has been instrumental in helping entrepreneurs build large, profitable and sustainable businesses. Z3Partners is known to back early trends, and discover teams that represent market leadership, quality-at-scale, and good governance.

ABOUT CYFIRMA

Headquartered in Singapore and Tokyo, CYFIRMA is a leading Predictive Cyber Threat Visibility & Intelligence Platform company. Its cloud-based AI and ML-powered Cyber Intelligence Analytics Platform helps organizations proactively identify potential threats at the planning stage of cyberattacks, offers deep insights into their cyber landscape, and amplifies preparedness by keeping the organization's cybersecurity posture up-to-date, resilient, and ready against upcoming attacks.

CYFIRMA works with many Fortune 500 companies. The company has offices and teams located in Singapore, Japan and India.