Grayscale Ventures, a Singapore-based venture has closed its first round of funding, garnering about half of its $20 Mn goal. Nikhil Kapur and Siddharth Verma intend to invest in about 15-20 firms in their pre-seed stage for the 10-year term.
It has so far made investments in some startups, including Olvy (a cloud-based feedback SaaS platform), and Localwell (a mobile SaaS-based Indian startup for pharmaceutical retailers).
As per Verma, it will invest in pre-product-stage companies. It has limited partners (LPs) from all over the world, notably from Japan, the United States, India, and remaining Southeast Asian nations. Most of the LPs are operators and founders from organizations like Hasura, Zendesk, STRIVE, GlobalWay, Slack, Nexus Venture Partners, etc.
In an interview with YourStory, Verma said, “In early 2022, we started having conversations with potential LPs. What LPs found interesting was these spaces that are so deep… potentially the next wave of very large companies would come out of these themes.”
While assisting the Tokyo-based VC (venture capital) firm STRIVE in deploying portions of its Fund II and III in Southeast Asia and India, the duo got to know one another there. Together, they contributed to about 25-28 firms and startups. After this, they planned to raise a fund with an emphasis on the Indian SaaS market.
Verma further stated, “Over time, we got the confidence that the investments we did at STRIVE are doing well. We invested $18 million-$20 million in the last six years. And now we’re sitting on 7X MOIC (multiple on invested capital) in India and Southeast Asia… that gave us the confidence to start our own fund.”