Along with Mohla who will be joining B Capital as a partner, the firm also announced the appointment of Matt Levinson and Adam Seabrook to bolster its investments across blockchain, fintech and digital healthcare. Levinson was earlier with New York-based Fintech Collective, a global venture capital firm focused on investments in financial technology while Seabrook has been with B Capital since 2015. Through the new appointments, B Capital is looking to ramp up its focus on fintech.
B Capital’s portfolio in India includes Byju’s, Meesho, Khatabook and Dailyhunt, among others.
In June 2020, B Capital closed its second fund with $822 million in capital commitments. In 2021, it announced the closing of a $415 million ‘Elevate’ fund to make follow-on investments in later-stage companies. B Capital also announced its foray into China, and said that it will be more active in the Indian and Indonesian markets.
Mohla’s appointment in B Capital would mean that the venture fund will get more aggressive in early-stage deals in India and Southeast Asia. Overall, the fund is looking to double down on India as a market, through its growth stage bets.
Kabir Narang, founding general partner at B Capital, said while it has been investing in growth-stage companies like PharmEasy, Meesho, and Byju’s, the fund would like to get in early in promising startups. “We are kind of pushing in that (direction)…having Karan on board will help us in our early-stage investments so that we can get into companies a bit early on,” said Narang to ET.
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B Capital’s early-stage cheques would typically be in the range of $500,000 and go upto $6 million. This would depend on various factors including various stages at which B Capital would look to invest. Its growth stage deals will continue to be in the range of $20-100 million.
“We are thrilled to name Matt, Karan, and Adam as partners. They are tremendous talents who know how to help founders succeed. This move underscores our commitment to investing in great companies with the potential to transform industries around the world,” said Howard Morgan, chairman of B Capital.
Mohla was a partner and executive director at the Indian venture capital firm, Chiratae Ventures where he made over 40 investments across 20 companies. Having joined the firm in 2013, some of his key investments at Chiratae included, mobility startup Bounce and fitness app HealthifyMe, among others. He also helped to lead investments in logistics service, XpressBees and travel aggregator, Yatra.com.
“At present, the idea is to partner with entrepreneurs who are innovating early on in areas which are core focus to B Capital. At least in India and increasingly in Southeast Asia, there is a lot of innovation. The lifecycle to get from seed to a scaled company has become shorter. A good part of the value capture does happen early on which used to take much longer … five-six years back. The market depth in India has certainly increased in the early-stages,” said Mohla to ET.
Last year saw Indian startups raise investments at a breakneck speed having
raised $42 billion in 2021, up from $11.5 billion in the previous year, as per a report by venture capital firm Orios Venture Partners.
Thanks to the funding momentum, several global risk investors, as well as sovereign funds, took bets on Indian late-stage startups, amid several companies taking the public markets.
In 2021, a record number of startups surpassed the valuation of $1 billion to enter the unicorn club. The frenzied funding in India saw
42 Indian startups being valued at $1 billion or more last year, up from 11 in 2020, according to data from research firm Venture Intelligence.
