Campus fund raises $10 million for investments in pre-seed stage firms

8 Jul 2022 , 02:06 PM

For its second fund, which will invest in pre-seed stage firms in India, venture capital firm Campus Fund has raised $10 Mn (almost Rs75 Cr).

According to ET, IIFL Wealth, Omidyar Network India, Bharat Shah of HDFC Securities, Jaimin Bhatt of Kotak, Kanwajit Singh of Fireside Ventures, and Shivkumar Janardhanan of Essilor India all participated in the round.

Richa Bajpai founded the student-led venture capital firm in Bengaluru and Mumbai in 2020, and it primarily invests in student-led startups. It asserts to have collaborated with more than 60 students from throughout India who helped scout and evaluate more than 1600 student-led enterprises over the course of the previous two years.

The first fund launched by Campus Fund, Fund I, had a capital of Rs7 Cr and invested in 10 startups in India, including LegalTech, ParkSmar, HealthySure, and Expand My Business.

Currently, its portfolio has 30% hardware-first tech-enabled firms, 30% female cofounders, 30% cofounders with Masters or PhDs, 70% B2B startups, and 30% non-tech founders.

Prior to that, Campus Fund and AWS collaborated to develop the Grand Challenge 2020. The two organizations were able to find and honor student entrepreneurs all around the nation thanks to this partnership.

Agritech startup qZense Labs took first place in the competition, with WorkDuck and Sandbird placing second. The three firms each won $10,000 worth of AWS credits as well as the opportunity to pitch their ventures to Campus Fund investors.

The Indian business ecosystem has observed a growing trend over the past several months of serial entrepreneurs or individual investors leaving their corporate careers and establishing venture capital funds. Rajeev Misra, CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers, recently left the financial powerhouse to launch his own venture capital firm. A venture capital fund was also created earlier in June by KKR advisor Sanjay Nayar to support early-stage entrepreneurs in the consumer tech, fintech, and SaaS sectors.

Earlier, the six-month-old venture capital firm All In Capital unveiled a $10 million fund for consumer Internet businesses in their early stages.