Venture Catalyst's 9Unicorns raises Rs 100 crore from Haldiram's, others

Mumbai: Venture Catalyst’s early stage startup fund 9Unicorns has raised Rs 100 crore from India’s leading snacks maker Haldiram’s and a few other unnamed investors.

Its investment corpus has now doubled to Rs 200 crore after it first raised Rs 100 crore in August last year. The startup accelerator has also exercised an option to increase its corpus to Rs 500 crore, it said in a statement. 9Unicorns is also in talks with corporations and investors to raise the next Rs 300 crore in the coming months, it added.

The fund is now looking to make early-stage investments in over 100 startups, the company said. It typically invests $100,000 for 5-7% stake per startup at the idea stage.


“Last year was indeed a great year for the startup ecosystem that witnessed the creation of 11 Unicorns. As a fund, we aim to back early-stage companies that have the potential to become billion-dollar companies in the future," said Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, co-founder of Venture Catalyst. “I anticipate the number of unicorns in India will grow 4x from 44 today in next few years, providing several investors with an opportunity to be a supporting agent and ensure multiple X returns from this emerging asset class.”

As of December, 9Unicorns syndicated over Rs 240 crore with co-investors such as Sequoia Surge, Titan Capital, SOSV, Lightspeed, Matrix Partners, and Nexus Ventures. “We will be closing the rest of the fund soon to boost further the entrepreneur network in India, especially those in the non-metros," Sharma said.

According to Kamal Agrawal, the executive director at Haldiram’s, its investment in 9Unicorns will help digital businesses across the country. “With this collaboration, we look forward to partnering actively with the 9Unicorns team…and mentoring the innovative digitally run 9unicorns investees,” he said.

Along with Haldiram’s, the Mumbai-based accelerator is backed by organisations such as the OPG Group, the MBG Group, Parakh Foods, Qualcon International, UB Cotton, along with executives from SAP, LinkedIn, Quest Global, AB InBev and Fujitsu.