Mela Ventures closees its First Fund at Rs 320 crore

Mela Ventures, an early-stage startup fund founded by Mindtree co-founders Krishnakumar Natarajan and Parthasarathy N.S. have announced that it will close its first fund, the  MV Core Tech Fund 1, at Rs 320 crore.

The SEBI-approved Tier 2 Early Stage AIF fund closed at Rs 320 crore, 1.6 times the initial closing target. Capital commitments were made by various groups of global investors, government institutions, technical professionals and family offices. This includes investments from the Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA) and the SIDBI Startup Fund of Funds.

It will back early-stage startup companies in the B2B space including technology startups in areas of AR/VR, AI/ML, drone and quantum computing. Mela Ventures expects to invest in 14-18 startups with this fund with a ticket size of $1.5 million to $2 million. It has already invested in four startups and will be investing in three more startups.

OTO focuses on B2B startups because of the expertise of the founder resides since they have successfully built a profitable company in Mindtree. For this reason, the focus is on fixing the investing startups to good governance practices in order to create profitable and sustainable businesses.