Khosla Ventures floating new $400M seed fund

Khosla Ventures, a 10-year-old venture capital fund launched by Sun Microsystems' co-founder Vinod Khosla, is raising $400 million afresh to make seed investments, the company said in a filing with the US SEC. More details about the fund are unavailable.

Founded in 2004, Khosla Ventures provides venture assistance and strategic advice to entrepreneurs. With over $3 billion under management, the firm focuses on a broad range of areas including consumer, enterprise, education, advertising, financial services, semiconductors, health, big data, agriculture/food, sustainable energy and robotics.

The VC fund has so far invested in around 15 companies that include Bangalore-based companies HackerRank (a technical recruiting platform for enterprises) and Theatro Labs Inc. (which makes voice-controlled wearable communications devices for hourly workers in the retail, hospitality and manufacturing industries).

Khosla Ventures is also operating an impact fund, called Khosla Impact, which has backed a dozen companies, mostly in India and Africa. Its Indian portfolio firms include DripTech, Embrace Innovations, EyeNetra and Simpa Networks.

In 2012, Khosla set up an incubator called Khosla Labs, along with Srikanth Nadhamuni. Recently, it partnered with seed-stage impact investor Unitus Seed Fund to incubate and fund four-six startups working on the Unique Identification Authority of India (Aadhaar) project.

An IIT Delhi graduate, Vinod Khosla is a serial entrepreneur, investor and technologist. He also holds a master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (the US). He is also co-founder of Daisy Systems. In the past, he was also associated with VC fund KPCB.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)