IFC may invest up to $20 million in India and Southeast focused VC firm Jungle Ventures

MUMBAI: World Bank arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) is looking to invest up to $20 million in the new fund being raised by Jungle Ventures, which recently roped in Ratan Tata as an advisor. The venture capital firm, which has a focus on Southeast Asia and India, is planning to raise $80 million for its second fund, according to an IFC disclosure.

IFC will invest $10 million in Jungle Ventures II and another $10 million will be reserved for co-investment. ET earlier reported that Singapore-based early stage venture capital firm will seek around $100 million for its new fund earlier this year.

Jungle Ventures has been actively expanding its team this year, most prominently roping in Ratan Tata as a special advisor as it looks to back more startups across Asia with its second fund.

It also appointed David Gowdey, former Head of International M&A at Yahoo! and investment executive with TPG Growth, as a managing partner. Other managing parters are co-founders, Anurag Srivastava and Amit Anand besides Jayesh Parekh, co-founder of Sony Entertainment Television India.

Jungle Ventures new fund will invest across seed, series-A and series-B stages in consumer internet mobile, analytics, health technologies, financial technologies, education technologies and enterprise software startups. Founded in 2012, it currently invests from its $10-million debut fund.

Jungle Ventures currently has a portfolio of 30 startups including Zipdial (recently acquired by Twitter), LivSpace, Tradegecko, CrayonData, Fastacash and travelmob (acquired by Nasdaq-listed HomeAway). While a third of its portfolio companies are in India, the remaining are in Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.