Micro VC firm Eximius hits first close of debut $10 mn fund

Micro venture capital firm Eximius Ventures on Thursday said it has marked the first close of its debut fund that seeks to make pre-seed investments in startups. 

The fund has a target corpus of $10 million (Rs 72.5 crore), said Eximius Ventures in a statement without specifying the first close amount. It also did not disclose who its Limited Partners (LPs), or investors, are. 

First close is a fundraising milestone after which funds typically deploy money for investments.  

Eximius Ventures, which was founded in March last year by Pearl Agarwal, said it will look to invest in edtech, healthtech, fintech, and gaming sectors. It will also explore opportunities in business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) and online media.  

The fund will typically invest $150,000 to $300,000 per startup. 

Agarwal said that as a fund investing in the pre-seed stage, it would primarily focus on addressing funding and accessibility gaps faced by startups and extend its support beyond capital. 

"Also, as a micro-VC fund, we are open to smaller seed investments," she added. 

Prior to launching Eximius Ventures, Agarwal worked with companies like UTIMCO ($40 billion endowment fund), Merrill Lynch and Global Infrastructure Partners. She has also made angel investments in companies such as Trell, Exprs and BluSmart Mobility.   

Micro venture capital (VC) firms have invested $341 million in 566 startups across 730 deals between 2018 and 2020, according to a recent survey co-authored by the Indian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (IVCA) and Amazon Web Services with business analytics and research firm Praxis Global Alliance.

Nearly 83% of the survey respondents said that micro VCs addressed the funding gap between angel investments and larger institutional cheques.