Hedge fund Falcon Edge raises India-focused fund worth $300 mn: Report

New York headquartered hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital has raised a new India-focused fund worth $300 million, Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), anchored by an undisclosed entity of the government of Abu Dhabi and investors from the UAE, The Economic Times reported, citing sources. 

The fund will invest upto $5 million in 60-80 early-stage technology-focused angel, seed and Series A deals in India and southeast Asia through its lifecycle, the report said.

According to the report, AWI will put together a dedicated team to run this fund and the focus of the fund would be to back startups with capabilities in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Falcon Edge has already deployed $100 million via its India Disruption Partners entity and will continue to back growth and late-stage startups through its global fund. 

Email queries sent to Falcon Edge did not elicit a response till the time of publishing this report.

Founded in 2012 by Richard Gerson, Ryan Khoury and Navroz D Udwadia, the fund has backed companies such as ride-hailing platform Ola and real-estate platform Housing that later merged with real-estate platform PropTiger.   

Last month, the firm raised $45.7 million for an India-focussed fund Falcon Edge India I LP on lending and fintech. With this, the firm invested in student accommodation startup Stanza Living, micro enterprise-focused non-banking financial company (NBFC) Aye Finance, social commerce platform DealShare, data analytics platform vPhrase and dockless scooter and bicycle sharing platform Bounce. The investments were made in 2019, according to data sourced from VCCEdge.

The news comes at a time when Palo Alto, California headquartered early stage fund Accel announced its sixth India-focused fund at $550 million. Sequoia Capital India also raised a corpus of $695 million in August 2018, as did Lightspeed India Partners with a $175 million fund in July 2018, renewing the commitment of the global venture capital firms for the India market. Last month, New York-based Tiger Global, which is on an investment spree in the Indian market with a focus on business-to-business (B2B) startups, raised a $3.8 billion global fund.