New Delhi, May 13 -- D2C Insider, a community of founders building and investing in direct-to-consumer businesses in India, is set to launch a new early-stage venture capital fund, people familiar with the development told VCCircle.
The firm recently received approval from the capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, for its Category II alternative investment fund, titled ConsumerX Ventures, and will soon launch roadshows for investors to participate. ConsumerX also joined the Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association, the industry body for private equity and venture capital firms, as a member a few weeks ago.
The 'community-led' cohort is targeting a Rs 150 crore ($15.7 million) corpus through the ConsumerX Ventures fund, which intends to invest in 25 early-stage D2C brands and enablers at the pre-seed and seed stages.
According to one person familiar with its plans, the firm is already in talks with a large consumer group to join as an anchor investor.
ConsumerX's average cheque size is likely to be around Rs 3-5 crore. It will aim to pick up a 10-15% stake in the portfolio companies and will reserve 40% of its corpus for follow-on capital to back its outperforming bets. It seeks to tap into shifts in the consumer ecosystem, including the rise of Gen Z and millennial consumers, the person cited above said. The fund hopes to enable its portfolio companies to reach Rs 100 crore in revenue and achieve profitability, and subsequently raise a Series A round from leading VCs within an 18-month horizon.
Abhishek Shah, chief evangelist of D2C Insider, will be managing partner at ConsumerX Ventures. Chhavi Bhardwaj Kargaonkar, who currently manages the D2C Insider's Category-I Super Angels fund, will be a partner at ConsumerX Ventures. Shah and Kargaonkar did not reply to VCCircle's queries.
D2C Insider began as a community on a social networking app in 2019 and counts V3 Ventures' Arjun Vaidya, Assembly's Aditya Khanna, BoAt's Aman Gupta, Mamaearth's Ghazal Alagh, The Man Company's Hitesh Dhingra, Wow Skin's Manish Chowdhary, mCaffeine's Tarun Sharma, and The MomsCo's Mohit Sadaani among its founding members. It has over 25,000 members across India and more than 2,500 investors. Its website says nearly 60% of its D2C brands that pitch on the reality show Shark Tank are part of their community.
D2C Insider is already in the midst of deploying its Category I fund Super Angels, which is backed by more than 70 operator limited partners. The fund has backed 16 portfolio companies so far. The Super Angels Fund hit its first close at Rs 10 crore in October 2024 and has a target corpus of Rs 25 crore.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.