New Delhi: India’s leading early-stage accelerator fund 9Unicorns has announced the launch of its second fund following a major rebranding exercise. As a result of this rebranding exercise, 9Unicorns will now be known as 100Unicorns.
100Unicorns, a part of India’s largest multistage investing firm Venture Catalysts Group, launches its second accelerator fund called 100Unicorns Fund II with a target size of $200 million including a green-shoe option of $100 million. The launch highlights the fund’s robust commitment to nurturing the growth of the next wave of 200 challenger startups emerging out of India.
This strategic move demonstrates 100Unicorns’ vision to fuel innovative companies and also marks the beginning of a paradigm significant shift in the Indian startup ecosystem by reducing dependency on international funding sources. Indian startups and entrepreneurs can now have early access to capital within their own ecosystem to boost the country’s entrepreneurial landscape.
In its first fund, 100Unicorns Fund I (formerly 9Unicorns) had invested in several innovative startups that went on to becoming multi-bagger success stories. Notable examples include Videoverse, Trunativ, ZyppElectric, Renee Cosmetics, and IGP, which have all emerged as leaders in their respective domains.
Leveraging this experience and learnings from Fund I, 100Unicorns is poised to scale this impact significantly with its Fund II.
“Rebranding to 100Unicorns is the next step in our evolution process. We have seen significant growth in the Indian startup ecosystem and massive funding inflow in the past couple of years. India was regarded as an IT outsourcing nation for the 3-4 decades, but in the last 10 yearsIndian has emerged as global leaders across large multi-billion dollar companies.
I strongly believe India will emerge as the ‘Startup Nation’ in the next 10 years, with the maximum number of entrepreneurs, highest number of Unicorns & largest employment generated by startups.
Today, Indians are targeting moonshot ideas in emerging sectors like Space Tech, BioTech, Electric Vehicles & Cleantech. On the back of these developments, we are excited about this next step of launching a $200 fund that aligns us to the needs of Indian startup ecosystem,” said Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Managing Director of Venture Catalysts Group and Cofounder of 100Unicorns.
With the new fund, Dr Sharma’s vision is to nurture a pool of 200 outlier startups and propel them to join the billion-dollar club over the next one decade.
The accelerator fund provides funding ranging from USD 300,000 to USD 1 million per startup in the first round, along with extensive product, business & fundraising support. This is followed by USD 500,000 to USD 2 million in subsequent rounds with co-investors.