Sequoia Capital tops up Fund IV with $125 million

BENGALURU: Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has topped up its fourth India-focused fund, which initially raised about $530 million in May 2014, giving it more gunpowder to back existing portfolio companies. The venture capital firm has added another $125 million to the fund, which will take its overall corpus to over $850 million, said one source familiar with the development.

Sequoia Capital said in a filing with US regulator Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC) that Sequoia Capital India IV has raised additional capital last week.

Earlier Sequoia Capital, some of whose most well-known bets include restaurant discovery and food-delivery portal Zomato besides data sciences firm Mu Sigma, had topped up fund IV by another $200 million. Sequoia Capital India also raised its fifth fund of $930 million in early 2016, which is currently making new investments.

The latest capital will take the total capital under management at Sequoia Capital India, which also invests in Southeast Asia, to about $3.2 billion.

An email sent to Sequoia Capital India did not elicit a response at the time of filing this article.




The top up for Sequoia Capital India comes as the VC firm just completed a $200-million secondary sale in a portfolio of over half a dozen companies to a consortium led by US-based specialist Lexington Partners.

Sequoia Capital India IV deployed capital primarily in 2014 and 2015, when the valuation of Indian consumer internet companies peaked, as a slew of strategic investors like SoftBank and hedge funds started aggressively backing companies here thinking it will be the next China.

Sequoia Capital India also invested aggressively during this period, especially in a slew of hyperlocal ventures like TinyOwl, Roadrunnr and Tapzo as it missed out on online retail. Some of these bets did not do well, as TinyOwl and Roadrunnr merged, with the combined entity Runnr now in talks for a sale.

Sequoia got a stake in online marketplace Snapdeal when its portfolio company FreeCharge was acquired, which it has sold through a slew of secondary sales. But at the same time, it has been able to make early investments in some of the most valuable companies in Southeast Asia, like bike taxi player GoJek, which was valued at over $2 billion recently. Another portfolio company is Tokopedia, which is Indonesia's largest e-commerce company.

Additional capital for Sequoia comes as VC firms raised a record amount of capital despite number of investments in the market slowing down and valuations starting to cool off last year. Led by local affiliates of Silicon Valley heavyweights, Sequoia Capital and Accel, VC funds dedicated to India raised a total of $2.2 billion in 2016 as compared to $1.5 billion in the year prior, according to data from Venture Intelligence.

In 2017 firms like IDG Ventures India and Sama Capital were able to close new funds, while firms like SAIF Partners are raising fresh capital.