Technology-focused early-stage investment firm, Venture Highway, has raised a sum of $79 million (about Rs 560 crore) for its second fund.

The founder of Venture Highway, Samir Sood divulged about the fund VH-XI, Mauritius-domiciled fund has raised from a clutch of Silicon Valley-based technology leaders. Referring to which he says, “We’ve been under the radar till date. This is the first time we have brought in external LPs, all of whom can be described as iconic investors, primarily from Silicon Valley, and are a mishmash

of tech founders, people who are in the VC business, and are long on India.”

The maiden fund, whose corpus has not been disclosed, was anchored by Sood, who has been a senior executive across roles in technology companies Google, Cisco Systems and Microsoft, and Neeraj Arora, the former chief business officer at instant messaging and VOIP platform WhatsApp, which was later acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion in a landmark deal. In fact, he continues to be one of the anchor LPs in the new seed-stage fund which made its final close in December last year. The investment ticket size for the new fund, which will aim to be the first institutional investor in startups, will range between $500,000 and $1.5 million-plus, up from between $100,000 and $1 million earlier.

“We will probably do between 25-30 deals from the new fund, and as we go ahead, we will come up with a reserve component…Compared to Fund-I now, we will now be leading deals, and be the first institutional cheques in,” Sood stated.

Till the present time, Venture Highway has announced one complete exit after its portfolio company, bot management solutions startup ShieldSquare, was acquired by Israeli cybersecurity company Radware in January last year, for an undisclosed sum.