Anicut Capital has launched the Grand Anicut Seed Fund, a new early-stage investment vehicle with a target corpus of Rs 175 crore and a greenshoe option of Rs 75 crore.
The fund, registered with SEBI as a Category I Alternative Investment Fund, will focus on pre-seed to Series A investments across deep-tech, enterprise-tech, consumer and financial services startups.
Anicut plans to back more than 20 startups through the fund, with initial cheque sizes ranging between Rs 5 crore and Rs 8 crore per investment.
The fund has already closed three deals and is targeting a first close of around $10 million in the coming month, with limited partners expected to include institutional investors, high-net-worth individuals and family offices.
This marks Anicut Capital’s second early-stage fund, following its Grand Anicut Angel Fund, which has made 68 investments since 2021.
Portfolio companies from that earlier fund have collectively raised over Rs 6,000 crore in follow-on capital, with portfolio revenue growing tenfold on average.
Ajay Anand, Partner at Anicut Capital, said the firm’s early-stage investment strategy had been validated through its previous fund, and that the new fund aims to build on that proven approach.
The launch comes amid a broader shift in India’s early-stage funding landscape, with investors increasingly looking beyond artificial intelligence toward sectors such as manufacturing, deep-tech and enterprise software.
The launch comes in a week when Indian startups collectively raised $209 million, according to industry tracking, with manufacturing, aerospace, enterprise software and healthtech emerging as the biggest investment themes rather than artificial intelligence.
Category I Alternative Investment Funds registered with SEBI are typically used by venture capital and angel investment vehicles in India to pool capital from institutional and high-net-worth investors under a regulated structure.
India’s early-stage funding environment has seen investors increasingly diversify beyond artificial intelligence in recent months, with manufacturing, deep-tech, enterprise software and healthtech drawing larger allocations.
(Image: Photo by Libreravi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
