Domestic and international investors, including banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), as well as some large family offices participated in the round.
Beams Fintech, launched in January, was targeting a fund size of $100 million and looking to invest in growth-stage startups in the financial services and technology space.
The existing investors of Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns have also backed Beams Fund in its first close.
Beams is co-founded by fintech veteran Sagar Agarwal and the founders of Venture Catalysts – Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain, and Gaurav Jain. Navin Surya, a serial fintech founder and industry expert, is on the board as an advisor.
“The fund is in the process of augmenting its investment team with strong fintech and financial services experienced investment professionals,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
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Beams is looking to primarily back fast-growing fintech companies in their Series B and C growth rounds.
The fund aims to reach the target corpus of Rs 750 crore, or $100 million, within the next nine months. It will invest in 10-12 companies and maintain its fintech focus.
The fund is now in advanced talks with several domestic and global institutional investors and family offices for its subsequent closes, it said.
It has narrowed down six major themes within the fintech space, including embedded finance, products and technologies, enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), neo-banks and platforms catering to medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs).
“The companies which are building products and services for banking solutions and new-age Web3 and neo-banking categories are very exciting for us,” said co-founder Agarwal.
The company will make around 12-15 investments over the next three years.
“We will be investing in companies with a valuation of around $250-$400 million and we will help these companies become unicorns,” Agarwal added.
Beams invested in millennial-focused neo-bank Niyo Solutions last month, alongside Accel and Lightrock India.
“This success in fundraising has come on the back of the track record and the team that we have built for Beams,” Golecha, cofounder and partner, said.
India has several sector-focused growth funds across consumer and health care, such as Fireside Ventures, Sixth Sense Venture, DSG Ventures, Healthquad, and Quadria.
Active growth stage investors in India’s fintech space include global funds such as Ribbit Capital, QED, Insight, GGV, General Catalyst, and Vitruvian.
