Consumer Brands Focused Fireside Ventures Closes Second Fund worth $118 Million

Early stage investment fund, Fireside Ventures has closed its second fund, Fireside Fund II, at Rs 863 crore or $118 million. The fund sees backing from marquee investors including Fund of Funds for Start -ups ( FFS), operated by SIDBI under the aegis of GOI’s initiative “Start-up India Action Plan”, Investment Corporation of Dubai, Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF, Bajaj Holdings and Investment Limited, ITC Limited, L’OREAL, Pidilite Group, Premji Invest, and a large US university endowment.

Founded in 2017, the Bangalore based VC firm manages a corpus of Rs 3.4 Bn to be invested in consumer brand startups in multiple rounds, from Seed to Series A funding. Fireside Ventures backs digital first consumer brands including boAt, Mamaearth, Vahdam Teas, Yoga Bar, Bombay Shaving Company, Pipa Bella, Kapiva Ayurveda to name a few.

Speaking to reporters at the virtual launch of the fund, Kanwaljit Singh, Founder & Managing Partner, Fireside Ventures said, “We have a commitment of Rs 863 crore while we started with a target of Rs 750 crore and saw strong interest from different investors and now have formally closed the fund. We have over 100 investors in the fund and had announced the first close (of the second fund) around a year-and-a-half back and have invested in four companies”.

The fund is looking to invest in 15-20 consumer brand start-ups and has already received investment interest from over 1500 companies. The firm evaluated over 300 of them before investing in Fable Street, SARVA Yoga, Gynoveda, and Slurrp Farm.

Fireside Ventures’ maiden fund worth $50 million was announced in early 2018. The firm evaluated over 400 startups before making investments in 18 of them. About 95 percent of the investible corpus of Fund I has been deployed, and the remaining 5 percent is reserved for follow-ons.