MUMBAI: US-based enterprise capital (VC) investor General Catalyst has acquired native funding agency Venture Highway because it appears to be like to capitalise on the rising India alternative and broaden its wager on the area with investments value $500 million-$1 billion lined up for the market in the approaching years.
“India’s economic, political and strategic agency in the world is growing….with India’s agency increasing and shifting geo-political background, the need for an extremely strong and deep Indo-US collaboration becomes imperative today,” the Silicon Valley primarily based agency which has backed Indian startups like Cred and Spinny stated in a press release.Venture Highway with experience in seed-stage investing and a localised presence has higher understanding of the India market in addition to entry to native expertise; that is what General Catalyst is trying to faucet into by way of this acquisition.
Co-founded by Neeraj Arora, former chief enterprise officer of WhatsApp in 2014, Venture Highway has been early backers of unicorns like Meesho and Moglix. The agency will now lead General Catalyst’s initiatives in India which has the third largest startup ecosystem globally after the US and China. “General Catalyst and Venture Highway aim to combine global networks and capital with deep India localisation to reimagine venture investing to suit India’s unique opportunities and challenges,” the agency stated.
Of late, a number of VC in addition to PE (personal fairness buyers) have raised new funds with a major allocation earmarked for the India market the place a big client base and rising disposable incomes current alternatives for startups to construct and innovate. Startup funding which has been tepid in line with a worldwide tech slowdown is selecting up tempo with fairly a number of late-stage offers in the pipeline.
In an interview with TOI final 12 months, General Catalyst’s CEO and managing director Hemant Taneja had stated that quite a lot of new Indian companies are anticipated to enter and scale up in areas like agriculture, local weather, healthcare and semiconductors over the following 5 to 10 years, helped by the nation’s tech stack. “A lot of work that has been done around Aadhar, UPI, sets us up well for innovation. It’s a phenomenal opportunity for India in the next 15 years,” Taneja had stated.