Accel has raised $650 million for its eighth India fund because the U.S. enterprise agency expands its funding technique within the South Asian market.
The brand new fund follows the agency’s seventh India fund secured in March 2022. Accel — which has backed corporations together with e-commerce group Flipkart, meals supply platform Swiggy and software program group Freshworks — has established itself as India’s most profitable enterprise agency, serving as the primary institutional investor in its portfolio corporations.
The agency wrote the primary institutional cheque for Flipkart at a $4 million post-money valuation — an funding that has since surged in worth, with Flipkart now price greater than $36 billion. Associate Anand Daniel led Swiggy’s seed spherical at a $2m pre-money valuation. Swiggy went public in November in what was the biggest world expertise IPO of 2024, at a valuation of $11.3 billion.
By 2022, the agency’s top-performing startups had collectively exceeded $100 billion in valuation.
The Indian startup dynamics has modified rather a lot since Accel first entered greater than a decade in the past. A key shift has been the rising variety of public listings, addressing earlier criticisms. Greater than half a dozen Accel-backed Indian corporations, together with manufacturing platform Zetwerk and jeweller Bluestone, are set to go public this yr, TechCrunch beforehand reported.
“India is quick turning into a promising hub for tech IPOs pushed by its robust capital markets and a thriving innovation ecosystem that continues to draw substantial investor curiosity,” Daniel (left within the above image) instructed TechCrunch in November.
Accel additionally stays one of many few Silicon Valley buyers that hasn’t separated its Indian unit, whereas rivals Sequoia and Matrix have reduce ties with their respective India funds in recent times.
The agency has not too long ago deepened its focus in direction of rural India, betting in opposition to standard knowledge that companies serving prosperous customers in smaller cities and cities can obtain sustainable success.
