Elev8 Venture Partners launching $200m tech-focused VC fund

Elev8 Venture Partners, the venture investor backed by India’s leading early-stage platform Venture Catalysts, is launching a $200-million fund that will focus on growth-stage, tech-driven companies in India.

The fund will be sector agnostics and intends to invest with a ticket size of $5-15 million in Series B and C rounds, according to the announcement.

The fund, which will be led and co-founded by Navin Honagudi, has received an AIF Cat II license from SEBI and includes a green-shoe option.

Honagudi is a seasoned fund manager with over 15 years of experience in early and growth stage technology investments. Prior to starting Elev8, he was a Partner at Kae Capital for over a decade and has invested in over 50 companies in areas such as Consumer Internet, Enterprise, Fintech, Edtech and Healthtech.

He started his career with the Corporate Venture of Reliance and has been part of India’s early internet investments and has seen several investments to exit cycles.

Elev8’s strategy leverages the team’s advantage of having access to high-quality deals at the growth stage, where Elev8 has also built proprietary data-driven algorithms in its investment framework, providing LPs with strong visibility into Elev8’s capital deployment strategy.

Some of the previous investments of the team behind Elev8 include India’s leading fintech company Paytm, Intracity logistic marketplace Shiprocket, Ed-tech platform Vedantu, Agri-tech platform Reshamandi and other significant startups such as Bharatpe, Kenko, BluSmart, Beardo, Niyo, Goat, Airmeet, Toch & Zypp.

Another part of Elev8’s strategy would be to focus on partnering with India’s leading seed funds, which have missed out on investing over $500mn of pro rata capital in 2021 alone for their successful portfolio companies.

While similar successful structures exist in the US and Europe, this will be India’s first Pro-Rata fund, providing unparalleled access to oversubscribed rounds alongside top-tier investors.

“Even though liquidity in technology investments is drying up, Elev8 has received an overwhelming LP interest as well as partnership avenues with seed funds, as the current vintage offers an excellent opportunity to invest in growth stage companies and earn/target attractive returns,” Honagudi said.