This VC fund is on the lookout for founders ‘with the ambition of Mukesh Ambani’

Jungle Ventures, an early-stage VC fund that invests in Indian and Southeast Asian start-ups, thrives on a contrarian investing philosophy. In a year defined by a funding slowdown, Jungle VC invested 10x more. “You need to be greedy when everyone is careful. We did 10 times more investments in 2022, when a lot of people were not investing anything,” Amit Anand, Founding Partner of Jungle VC, told Business Today.

Not only this, the Singapore-headquartered firm also closed its fourth fund, with a corpus of $600 million, for investments in new as well as existing portfolio companies. Jungle VC currently manages assets worth more than $1 billion, and has an active portfolio of 50+ companies, with a cumulative valuation of over $12.5 billion. 

In India, it has backed start-ups like Moglix, Livspace, Atomberg, Citimall, Leap Finance, Turtlemint, InFeedo, and others. The market already accounts for more than 50 per cent of Jungle VC’s investments. “We are high-conviction and thematic investors. We don’t get caught up in the hype cycles. You need to be consistent if you want to make a long-term institutional fund,” said Anand. 

He further pointed out that his firm is willing to back founders who have an enormous vision and an appetite to become category leaders. “We’re looking for someone with the ambition of Mukesh Ambani [who’s known to enter a sector and dominate it],” Anand says. “Take Rahul [Garg] at Moglix, for example. We entered the company in the seed round and have invested in all its following rounds.”

Moglix, a B2B ecommerce platform, is currently valued at $2.6 billion, and is one of the biggest success stories in Jungle VC’s portfolio. With new emerging technologies changing the tech landscape globally, Jungle VC is now looking for founders who are leveraging AI to build new business models. “In 12-18 months, we hope to find some gems in AI and Web3,” Anand said.

Unlike several global investors with deep pockets, Jungle VC prioritises “margins before scale”. “Investors are backing companies which have wafer thin margins. But we want scale with margins,” Anand said. “Between 2015 and 2019, our portfolio companies grew 60x in revenues but their cash burn was up by only 6x. Our loss ratio for the last 10 years has been less than 7 per cent,” he explained.

On an average, Jungle VC deploys $200-250 million worth of capital each year, with 5-6 investments each in India and Southeast Asia. Post the struggles of the start-up ecosystem in 2022, Anand is of the opinion that founders have become more conscious of their equity holdings while raising funds. 

“The world looks dramatically different now. Founders are far more cognisant of where this [fundraising] is all going. They are thinking about whether they will be a 2 per cent owner or a 20-30 per cent owner of their companies [at the time of exit]," he said. 

Anand also is not a big believer in the cohort-based funding programmes that have emerged in India and SEA in the last few years. “Pre-seed investing has become a cottage industry. Funds are promising the same cheque sizes in cohorts and batches; it is a recipe for disaster. Pre-seed cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach,” he explained.

Jungle VC though is ready to shell out anything from $500,000 to $5 million, depending on whatever the start-up needs. “We help founders mitigate risks. We’ve seen enough successes and failures to bring that value. Our last two funds are in the top profile of global VC returns,” said Anand.

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