New Delhi, June 12 -- Abu Dhabi-headquartered AUM Ventures, which makes early and pre-growth stage bets on Indian entrepreneurs, has launched its second fund.
The firm is targeting a corpus of $80 million (Rs 750 crore) for the India Innovation Fund II, about three times the corpus it raised in its debut vehicle, it said in a statement on Thursday.
The announcement comes about four months after VCCircle reported the firm's plan to roll out the new fund.
"India is at a unique inflection point where policy support, talent, and capital availability are converging to create unprecedented opportunities for DeepTech and innovation," said Chetan Mehta, Founding Partner, AUM Ventures.
The fund is registered as a Category-II alternative investment vehicle with the Securities and Exchange Board of India. It will back founders building intellectually property-driven, innovation-led companies, which have the potential to compete globally, the VC firm said.
"The companies building in deeptech need to think global from day one. Further, given the long gestation, company building requires long-term strategy, milestone based fund raising, strategic global GTM (go-to-market) and building strong leadership teams," said Mehta.
The firm rolled out its debut fund in 2023. It marked the fund's first close that April and final close in 2025. With some of the fund's limited partners co-investing, the fund deployed about $30 million in 24 early-stage companies such as Skyroot Aerospace, and spacetech startups Cosmoserve Space and Sanyark.
Further, the VC firm has roped in Nisha Shah as a General Partner for Fund II. Shah previously held leadership positions for a family office and worked for venture capital and private equity firms.
The second fund will invest in about 25-30 seed- stage and pre-seed startups, with an initial cheque size ranging from $750,000 to $2 million. It will also provide follow-on capital to its winners in Series A/B stages.
These are double of what the debut fund invested in its portfolio companies. From the first fund, Aum Ventures invested between $300,000 and $1 million as a first cheque in each of its portfolio companies, with average cheque values ranging from $500,000 to $600,000 (around Rs 4.5 crore to Rs 5.4 crore).
Mehta set up AUM Ventures in 2022. The vehicle, registered in Abu Dhabi Global Markets, has garnered backing from limited partners in the United Arab Emirates, United States and Singapore. These include a mix of family offices, large GPs of global funds, and tech entrepreneurs who built and sold businesses in the US.
The VC firm backs tech, tech-enabled and consumer-driven areas. These include sectors such as deeptech, AI, fintech, direct-to-consumer, healthcare AI, edge computing, and emerging technologies.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.