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AdvantEdge gets new investors for its second fund

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Early stage fund AdvantEdge has new investors for its second fund. Laksh Vaaman Sehgal and Abhimanyu Munjal, scions of two large business families in India, have collectively put Rs 100 crore as part of the corpus amount.

AdvantEdge II will be a Rs 300-crore fund and focus on the country’s mobility segment. It follows an emerging trend of new investment vehicles betting on niche segments, rather than a broader consumer technology-focused investment theme.

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“What we found was, with our strengths, mobility is a theme in which we can add our existing networks and the systems that we have in place, which will bring a lot to the table to the startups by giving them access to our customers, infrastructure…,” Sehgal told ET “It is a natural progression for us.”

Sehgal is vice-chairman of Samvardhana Motherson Group, which owns and operates the Rs 49,750-crore auto components giant Motherson Sumi Systems, while Munjal is joint managing director of Hero FinCorp, the NBFC arm of the Rs 58,000-crore Hero MotoCorp.

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The two have backed some of India’s top digital ventures including online insurance policy aggregator PolicyBazaar and Saavn the music streaming service acquired by Jio last year.

“We have been extremely successful in recognising the opportunities in shared mobility early in Fund I, resulting in all our mobility portfolio companies not only delivering over 80% IRR, but also becoming market leaders,” Kunal Khattar, managing partner at AdvantEdge, told ET. “In Fund II, we want to continue with that successful strategy but with an expanded scope by including digital, logistics and smart cars.”

As part of its investment strategy, AdvantEdge will look to invest Rs 1-3 crore in portfolio companies, with a view to pumping in up to Rs 25 crore over the lifecycle of its investment. According to Khattar, AdvantEdge, which has received hard capital commitments of over Rs 100 crore, is targeting a first close by March later this year.

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“We have already built a pipeline of investments, which is why we are targeting a first close of the fund by March. We should be ready to announce our first set of deals by then,” Khattar said.

The new fund comes about three years after AdvantEdge launched its maiden fund, which had invested across segments. That fund had backed app-based bus aggregator Shuttl, bike taxi app Rapido, bus tracking app Chalo, digital media company ScoopWhoop, and home-grown dating app TrulyMadly.

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