A99 Sets Sights on $100 Million to Fuel India's Manufacturing Startups
- A99 is raising its third fund with a target of $100 million (~Rs 850 crore), already receiving $30 million in soft commitments.
- Fund III will back early-stage manufacturing startups (pre-Series A to pre-Series B) with cheque sizes of Rs 20–80 crore; 20% reserved for follow-on investments.
- A99, founded by Vignesh Shankar, grew from a $1M personal fund in 2021 to Fund II (~Rs 105 crore), shaping its strategy for the new fund.
Advanced manufacturing-focused venture capital firm A99, formerly known as Artha99, is raising its third fund with a target of $100 million (~Rs 850 crore), Founder and Managing Partner Vignesh Shankar told. The firm has already received soft commitments worth $30 million and plans to actively start fundraising in the coming months.
A99 aims to begin deploying capital from Fund III starting April 2026. The fund will focus on early-stage startups, ranging from pre-Series A to pre-Series B, with cheque sizes between Rs 20 crore and Rs 80 crore. Following a growing trend among niche VC firms, A99 will also reserve a portion of the fund for follow-on investments, allocating around 20% for this purpose, while 80% will go into fresh investments.
Based in Chennai, A99 has steadily grown in the venture capital space. The firm began in February 2021 with a $1 million fund sourced directly from Shankar’s personal savings while he was at Stanley Black & Decker. Later that year, he left corporate life to focus full-time on investing, establishing the SEBI-registered fund.
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In 2022, A99 launched Fund II with an initial target of Rs 50 crore, but strong investor interest led to a greenshoe option, taking the fund’s total corpus to around Rs 105 crore. Shankar noted that these earlier funds helped shape the company’s investment strategy and themes for upcoming investments. With Fund III, A99 looks to continue its support for the growing ecosystem of advanced manufacturing startups in India, leveraging past learnings to back high-potential ventures.
