INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
firm, which largely focuses on early-stage investments, said today it has closed $550 million for its sixth venture fund in India.This is a
through all its previous funds.Anand Daniel, a partner for Accel in India, told TechCrunch in an interview that the VC fund will continue to
focus on identifying and investing in seed and early-stage startups.But the fund realized it needed more money so it could actively
participate in follow-on rounds (later-stage financing rounds) of its portfolio startups
growth investments for companies that are scaling well, such as Swiggy, UrbanClap, Blackbuck and Bounce
It participated in the seed financing round of e-commerce firm Flipkart, which was then valued at $4 million post-money
Walmart bought a majority stake in Flipkart last year for $16 billion
(This helped Accel net more than $1 billion in return from Flipkart.)Accel, which has nine partners and more than 50 members in total in
India, also invested in the seed round of SaaS giant Freshworks, which is now valued at more than $3 billion, food delivery startup Swiggy,
also valued at north of $3 billion, and recently turned unicorn Blackbuck
Accel has been the first institutional investor for 85% of startups in its portfolio.The VC firm says 44 of the 100-odd startups in its
India portfolio today are valued at over $100 million each
Just 1 in 50 Indians had access to the internet and mobile phone ownership was nascent
significantly bigger than when we started in 2005: India can now digitally identify 1.3 billion people, has 600 million internet users and
Accel will continue to focus on consumer, business-to-business, fintech, healthcare and global SaaS categories
They invest from their own conviction and finance seed rounds
For example, back in the day we invested in mobility startup TaxiForSure, long before Uber had arrived in India
That helped us understand mobility well
rounds.For Indian startups that are already having their best year, this can only be good news.
