World Bank’s International Finance Corporation to invest in Prime Venture’s latest fund

World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) said on Thursday it will invest up to $15 million (Rs 111.6 crore) in Bengaluru-based Prime Venture Partners’ latest fund Seabright.

The investment will be capped at 20% of the total fund size. IFC also proposes a co-investment of up to $15 million, it said in a disclosure.

The World Bank arm said that Seabright will primarily focus on seed to Series A investments in Indian tech-enabled companies across healthcare, education, financial services, logistics, consumer internet and enterprise technology.  

IFC’s investment will help Seabright and its investee companies to implement ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) standards and monitoring, the disclosure said.  

Seabright will be managed by Yashas IV, Delaware, USA, whose managing member is Raj Mashruwala from Azure91 Management, a Delaware USA entity.  

IFC, which has an active LP (limited partner) portfolio in India, also makes direct private equity-style investments and lends to companies in the country.

Last week, it proposed to invest in homegrown private equity firm Everstone’s largest ever fund.

In 2019, IFC co-invested with two venture-stage investors, of which one was said to be Prime Venture.

Started in 2012, Prime Venture is an early stage venture fund led by Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya and Amit Somani. Its portfolio companies include workforce manager Zuper; SaaS platform Winuall; automotive retail company OTO; and remote health monitoring startup Dozee.