9Unicorns announces the closure of maiden $100 mn fund

Early-to-growth stage accelerator fund 9Unicorns has announced the closure of its maiden $100 million fund.

The fund has by far invested in more than 110 idea product start-ups, including a few growth stage / series C players like Vedantu, ShipRocket, ShopKirana, and across sectors like fintech, crypto, deeptech, enterprise SaaS, Web 3.0, and many more.

The fund was launched in late 2020 with a total size of $50 million, buoyed by the overall positive sentiment in the Indian start-up ecosystem.

The Indian start-up ecosystem and fund’s current portfolio performance has led 9Unicorns to double at $100 million so far. According to a recent NASSCOM-PGA Labs report, the first quarter of 2021 witnessed a heightened deal activity, with 81 per cent of the funding driven by early-stage and growth-stage deals. The report added that 76 per cent of the total number of deals were small-ticket with average size of $25 million and less.

9Unicorns said that it plans to invest $500,000 to $1 million in the idea stage and, up to $2 million in high-growth stage Series C and above startups this year.

“Our unique approach to redefine idea stage funding has led to an increased fund size with several leading LPs believing in our strategy. Besides, last year was one of the best times for the startup ecosystem with a funding rush. We invested in 101 deals in 2021 and plan to double that amount this year. We will finish deploying the fund by mid next year, post which we plan to launch our second fund,” said Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Managing Director and Founder of 9Unicorns.

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