Ixora Ventures invests in 3 startups; raising maiden seed-cum-early stage fund

Ixora Ventures, a Delhi-based early-stage venture fund which is on road to raise its maiden early-stage investment fund, has already chalked three investments and is close to investing in an incubatee of iAccelerator programme. Techcircle.in caught up with its founder and managing partner Nikhil Mulchandani for an insight into the investment strategy of the new early-stage investor.

The investment firm has set a broad investment size in the range of $25,000-$500,000; the focus is on tech startups and it is looking to invest in 4-5 companies this year, said Mulchandani.

According to him, Ixora has so far invested in three companies, of which two transactions have been closed. These include Learnpedia, AlmaConnect and Warranty Asia.

Another three are in the pipeline including one incubatee of iAccelerator, run by the Centre For Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE) of IIM-Ahmedabad. Ixora is focusing on education, healthcare, technology and mobile segments.

Ixora has a network of more than 25 active investors and has strategic alliances with family offices and private equity firms who are backing its maiden fund, added Mulchandani. He did not disclose the exact size of the fund but indicated it would be smaller than an average VC fund in India, which is usually $50 million-plus.

Learnpedia, which is the more recent investment, provides digital learning solutions to students preparing for engineering entrance exams while AlmaConnect aims to connect institutions and alumni, active on various social media networks. The third investee, Warranty Asia, develops and manages insurance programmes for companies operating in telecom and IT sectors. Its key customers include manufacturers and distributors of phones, laptops, cameras and other electronic products.

Founded a few months ago by Mulchandani, Ixora will also look at co-investments for larger tranches of financing.

Prior to setting up Ixora, he worked with the M&A department of a multinational in the energy infrastructure sector. He has also spent two years with the KPMG corporate intelligence team, which was responsible for advising clients in private equity and venture capital sectors. Mulchandani had also set up his own venture in the insurance services sector, which was sold off early last year.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)