New Delhi, 9th June, 2020: Arkam Ventures, a VC fund led by Indian entrepreneurs raises around $42 Million (325 crores) in its first funding round.
Arkam Ventures previously known as Unitary Helion looking to support founders with bold and unconstrained ideas that reshape the largest markets in India and positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians.
“We announced our first close with INR 325 CR in committed capital en route to our target of INR 700 CR for the fund. We have already made two investments with three more to be announced shortly”, the company said in a blog post.
Indian entrepreneurs like Vijay Shekhar, Binny Bansal, Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Rajesh Magow, Mekin Maheshwari and Kumar Sudarshan, among many others, are supporting this fund.
The Arkam ventures looking to fund startups coming from financial services, healthcare, food/grocery and mobility.
The company said, “Our thesis for this fund is “Middle India by Design”. We believe that the Next 400M market consumers just below the top of the pyramid making between Rs 3L and Rs 20L a year in family income will be the primary driver of a new digital India. Almost seventy percent of the wallet share of these consumers is distributed across four sectors financial services, healthcare, food/grocery, and mobility. These will be our focus areas although we will not shy away from any opportunity that is genuinely disruptive.”
The COVID crisis in India has significantly accelerated the digitization momentum in core sectors like financial services, healthcare, food/agri and mobility.
It has likely forced permanent consumer, business, and regulatory shifts that would have taken much longer and followed an unpredictable path on their own. For example, regulatory changes that allow cross-state selling of agricultural produce; digital onboarding and streamlining of financial transactions; and digital health processes such as video consultation at hospitals are just some examples of a tidal wave of change that is likely to reshape these core sectors.