Little Black Book raises Rs 7 cr venture debt from Alteria Capital

Iluminar Media, which owns and operates local brand and event discovery app Little Black Book, has raised Rs 7 crore in venture debt through Series A debentures from Alteria Capital India Fund - I, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies. 

The company had previously raised Rs 34.5 crore in Series A equity round from Inventus India and IAN Fund in April. 

Japanese firms Dream Incubator and Akatsuki Entertainment technology fund had also participated in the round along with existing investors Blume Ventures and Chiratae Ventures. 

“We are very excited to partner with Suchita and Dhruv at LBB as they bring to the forefront real Indian businesses and provide visibility to small communities and local brands,” said Vinod Murali, managing partner, Alteria Capital, in response to queries sent by TechCircle. 

“The company continues to work on monetisation and the capital will help in bringing more partners into the platform as well as increasing velocity of commerce,” he added.

Alteria Capital, which recently announced the final close of its Rs 960 crore maiden debt fund, has deployed more than 60% of the corpus since its first close on March 2018. Murali said the fund had committed Rs 615 crore across 30 transactions. 

Listen: Alteria founders Ajay Hattangadi and Vinod Murali on navigating India’s venture debt market

The fund typically looks at post-Series A companies in focus areas of consumer, technology and healthcare with an ability to write cheques up to Rs 100 crore for growth-stage companies.

Little Black Book was founded in 2015 by Suchita Salwan and Dhruv Mathur and has a presence across eight cities. 

It started as a curated feed on lifestyle, food, events, travel and shopping. The company introduced commerce on the platform a year ago and works with 60,000 brands for discovery and enabling transactions. During its fundraise in April, the company had said it was witnessing 30% month-on-month growth in revenues from commerce.  It claims a monthly active user base of 350,000.