Consumer-focused venture capital company Sauce.vc, which counts Mokobara, Whole Truth Foods, Supertails, and Bare Anatomy among its portfolio companies, has reportedly marked the final close of its third fund at INR 365 Cr (nearly $43.6 Mn).
As per the report, citing founder and managing partner Manu Chandra the fund is against a target corpus of INR 250 Cr. The VC fund has raised capital from Infosys cofounder Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office Pratithi Investments, Marico promoter Harsh Mariwala’s Sharp Ventures, Singularity Ventures, and Saison Capital.
Another report stated that 95% of its capital was raised from domestic investors, with nearly 80% from the existing sponsors of Sauce VC’s previous funds.
Chandra founded Sauce.vc in 2019 and floated its third VC fund with a target to raise INR 250 Cr ($30 Mn) in May, back at that time the company was looking to invest in 15-16 early-stage consumer brands. As per the report, Chandra confirmed that the VC firm received demand for subscriptions that amounted to about INR 700 Cr.
He added, “We’ll continue to take pre-seed, pre-revenue bets… with an average cheque size of around INR 5 Cr, and we will reserve about 75% of the fund for follow-ons.”
In June, Ahmedabad-based ice cream brand Hocco raised INR 100 Cr ($12 Mn) in a fresh funding round that is led by Sauce.vc and its promoter group is the Chona family. More than this beverage startup Rockit raised INR 6 Cr in a pre-seed funding round that is also led by Sauce.vc, along with participation from Roadies fame Rannvijay Singha.
This third fund of Sauce.vc blooms the consumer brands that have been gaining the likes of investors. In the last few years India’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) market is likely to reach a size of $100 Bn by 2025. Fashion and clothing startups have the highest potential and are expected to grow to $43.2 Bn by 2025.
