Sauce VC logs final close of Rs 750-crore opportunities fund

Sauce VC, a venture capital firm focused on backing consumer brands, has closed a Rs 700-750 crore fund that it will use to back some of its high-growth portfolio companies, founder and managing partner Manu Chandra told ET.

The new fund will support four to five startups from Sauce’s early-stage portfolio, allowing it to double down on some of its high-conviction bets such as ice-cream brand Hocco, clean-label snack maker The Whole Truth, new-age luggage brand Mokobara, skincare startup Innovist, apparel brand XYXX and petcare startup Supertails.

“With this fund, we can now write cheques of up to Rs 250 crore in our highest-conviction bets, allowing us to back companies from the idea stage all the way to IPO,” Chandra said. “Our approach is simple…stay concentrated and build returns by doubling down. When we find a strong company and founder, we want to partner with them in a meaningful, long-term way.”


This is Sauce’s second opportunities fund—the first was a Rs 260 crore fund launched in 2024—and fifth investment vehicle. The New Delhi-based firm raised Rs 60 crore in 2019, Rs 158 crore in 2021, and closed its third fund in 2024 at Rs 365 crore against a target of Rs 250 crore.

“It is the first time we’ve raised capital from large global institutions outside India. We’ve raised about $66-67 million (about Rs 600 crore) from overseas investors, along with around Rs 160 crore from domestic backers,” Chandra said. “The international capital has come largely from the US, Europe, the Middle East, Singapore and Hong Kong, spanning large global institutions and family offices.”

Doubling down

With this opportunities fund, Chandra said, Sauce gets the ability to write larger cheques in some of the portfolio companies.

The firm co-led a Rs 450 crore funding round in The Whole Truth earlier this month, along with Belgian investor Sofina. Sauce was also the Mumbai-based brand’s first investor, having written a seed cheque in 2019. It invested in Ahmedabad-based Hocco at the seed stage in 2023 and led its Rs 115-crore fundraise in September 2025, with another large round being discussed.

“We’ve already begun deploying capital from the fund, committing more than half of it to Hocco, The Whole Truth, Innovist and Supertails,” Chandra said.

Next vehicle

Sauce is now expected to launch its fourth early-stage fund by June-July this year. The firm’s founder said the corpus will stay in the Rs 350-450 crore range, in line with its third fund.

“We’re clear that we don’t want to raise large blind pools for early-stage investing. We’ve kept those funds tightly sized and disciplined. Given where the market is today, we believe the right size for us is $40-50 million. That’s why we capped Fund-III at $40 million,” he said.

Through partial exits made in The Whole Truth, Mokobara and XYXX, Sauce has been able to return three-and-a-half times the corpus of its first Rs 60 crore fund.

Chandra said Sauce will continue to look for niches in large consumer categories such as home care, wellness, appliances, snacking and jewellery—“all categories with enough depth to warrant disruption through a new age brand.”

Over the last few years, consumer brands have been able to generate outsized exits for early-stage venture investors through either public listing, as in the case of Mamaearth, or through being acquired by larger companies such as Hindustan Unilever, Marico and ITC.

With investor appetite also increasing, several VC firms have raised consumer-focused funds.

Consumer investor Fireside Ventures in December closed its Fund-IV with a Rs 2,265 crore corpus, the firm’s largest ever. In September, ET reported that Singapore-based consumer-focussed venture capital firm Venturi Partners announced the first close of its second fund at $150 million. DSG Consumer Partners also started the process to raise a new fund.