Helion’s New Fund, New Plan

Singh led Carlyle's venture investments before Helion

Helion raised its second fund, $210 million, early this month, and is perhaps the only venture capital firm in India at present that has raised two funds within 20 months. The first fund was raised in August 2006. They have raised money primarily from investors in the US and the list includes quite a few university endowments. I’ve been watching Helion’s fast pace of deal-making in the past year with some interest and I’m not surprised that they are already out with a second fund. Fund I is now over 50 per cent invested and new investments this year will primarily be from Fund II.

Last week I caught up with Kanwaljit Singh in Mumbai and found out more about investment plans from Fund II. The original theme doesn’t change much — technology-powered businesses but the firm has now added ‘consumer services’ to their plank. Again, not surprising because some interesting early-stage business models are beginning to emerge in that space and a solo focus on technology, beyond a point, cannot sustain deal-flow in the Indian market yet. Of course, the first venture capital firm to focus on the consumer theme in India was Matrix Partners.

The firm is beefing up its team to manage the expanded focus — the investment team will add one more to the current four and a couple of folks on the operating side — Helion has senior non-investing professionals on board to help portfolio companies with their operations — are also in the pipeline. So what kind of consumer niches are looking interesting? “Maybe speciality retail, financial services, education,” says Singh.

The new focus will not see a scale up in deal ticket sizes, though — the maximum per deal remains $10 million. It may look at more mature businesses than usual but I don’t see that affecting the firm’s focus on seed-stage start-ups. The portfolio so far has been quite well balanced — six in the seed-to-early stage and five in the mid-to-growth stage. Look forward to some interesting deals from this team.

FastFacts

• Twin headquarters in Bangalore and Gurgaon
• Started investing in 2006 from a $140 million fund.
• Founder team is an interesting mix — Kanwaljit Singh has done a long stint with Hindustan Unilever and then did growth and venture deals for Carlyle in India. Sanjeev Aggarwal co-founded Daksh eServices (acquired by IBM). Ashish Gupta has been a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley — Tavant Technologies and Junglee. Rahul Chandra was the first hire at Walden International’s India offices back in the mid-nineties.
• Has invested in 11 companies till date, among them, Kirusa, Mindworks, Jigrahak and MakeMyTrip.

Photo: Helion Venture Partners Website