GVFL, formerly known as Gujarat Venture Finance Limited, is the pioneer of venture capital in India. Founded in 1990 at the initiative of the World Bank and managed by an independent and autonomous board, GVFL ushered in the dawn of venture capital in India. Over the past three decades, Ahmedabad-based GVFL has supported several ventures working on cutting-edge technology as well as encouraged entrepreneurs with innovative ideas.
GVFL has carved out a niche for itself by making marquee investments in early-stage to growth-stage startups and companies across sectors through various funds. GVFL has raised eight venture capital funds that have supported close to 100 companies. Leveraging on decades of full investment lifecycle experience in startup investing, GVFL launched its 9th Fund – GVFL Emerging Enterprises Fund in June 2022.
This Fund looks to invest in early to growth-stage, tech-enabled, sector-agnostic, and asset-light startups and MSMEs with a ticket size of Rs. 5 crore to Rs. 20 crore. GVFL had invested Rs. 50 crore in seven early-stage companies in 2022. It was the first institutional investor in four of the seven companies, reflecting its commitment to supporting new and exciting business ideas.
GVFL’s most recent investment was in the country’s fastest-growing K-12 (kindergarten to 12th) pedagogy company Saarthi Pedagogy. The Ahmedabad-based B2B EdTech startup currently covers 1,500 schools across India and has onboarded two lakh students. GVFL’s investment will help it expand its reach to over 5,000 schools and onboard 8 lakh students.
In its endeavour to make a bigger contribution to the startup ecosystem, GVFL has chalked out plans to scale up its investments and plans to invest around Rs. 100 crore in 2023 in a wide variety of startups. GVFL is also set to launch “GVFL Prarambh Fund” – a Seed Stage Fund with a target corpus of Rs. 200 crore.
The Fund will invest Rs. 50 lakh to Rs. 2 crore in seed-stage, early-stage, proof of concept, or product prototype-ready startups. The fund will invest in startups and MSMEs in EdTech, D2C, HealthTech, Agritech, BioTech, Software as a Service (SaaS), DeepTech, AI & ML and Consumer brands.
For the Seed Fund, GVFL will raise Rs. 100 crore from various Institutions, Family Offices and HNIs in addition to investment of Rs. 100 crore from the Government of Gujarat, which has committed Rs. 1,000 for the next five years for Venture Capital investments in sectoragnostic tech startups in Gujarat.
A unique feature of GVFL’s approach has been its broad-spectrum support to its funded entities which ranges from strategic direction to governance support. Some of the ventures GVFL has invested from previous Fund include Clientjoy, Ecotrail Personal Care, Optimised Electrotech, Sequretek, Petpooja, Qarmatek and India INX, etc.
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