Unicorn India completes first close of second fund; backs SaScan Meditech

Mumbai-based venture capital firm Unicorn India Ventures has raised $12 million (around Rs 92 crore at current exchange rates) in the first close of its second India-focused equity fund.

With this, it has garnered one-fourth of the overall targeted amount of Rs 400 crore (around $53 million at current exchange rates), the company said in a statement.

Dubbed Unicorn India Ventures Equity Fund II, it made its maiden investment in a Thiruvananthapuram headquartered health-tech startup SaScan Meditech, the statement said. It invested an undisclosed amount in the startup’s seed funding round, a company spokesperson said.

Founded in 2016 by medical professionals Subhash Narayanan and Ruhi Agarwala, SaScan Meditech provides fully automated solutions for non-intrusive oral and cervical cancer screening. It will use the fresh capital to develop its technology for early detection of skin cancer and precancerous abnormalities, the company said.

“We will keep scouting for innovative ventures as we did in Fund I. SaScan is building a range of devices and solutions to detect early signs of cancers. Their methodology of making cancer detection less painful and more accurate in pre-diagnosis impressed us to invest in them,” Anil Joshi, managing partner of Unicorn India Ventures, said.

The second fund aims to invest in about 20 companies, with a ticket investment size of about $1 million, the statement said. It aims to complete its final close in the next 12 months, it added.

Limited partners in the first close of the second fund consisted of undisclosed Indian family offices and investors from the first fund, Unicorn India Ventures said in a statement.

As part of its $16-million Fund I, Unicorn India Ventures invested in 18 companies, including neo-banking platform Open Bank, automated scavenging platform Genrobotic, cybersecurity startup Sequretek and online lending platform SmartCoin.

“With this second fund, we hope to continue our track record of identifying innovative business models with faster scalability across sectors (such as) business-to-business, software-as-a-service, healthtech, robotics, gaming and digital content,” Bhaskar Majumdar, managing partner of Unicorn India Ventures, said.

Founded in 2015 by Majumdar and Joshi, the venture capital firm also operates a United Kingdom-India cross-border fund, called Unicorn Ascension Fund, to help startups in the UK that are looking to enter India. The firm has invested in six startups in the UK so far.