Early-stage investor Artha Venture Fund, which has backed beginnings such as Agnikul and LenDen Club, has partially exited Mumbai-based fleet operator Everest Fleet for $2 million (around Rs 16.5 crore). Since 2019, the firm has raised a total of Rs 10 crore in Everest Fleet, which recently closed a $20 million funding round led by ride-hailing platform Uber. The partial exit from Everest marks the first exit for Artha Venture Fund-I, which has a corpus of Rs 225 crore.

Artha Venture Fund managing partner Anirudh Damani said the firm was targeting two more exits, partial and complete, in the next 12 months. “We continue to hold some stake in Everest Fleet because it’s a profitable company, and we see it eventually becoming a candidate for an initial public offering (IPO)”, he said. Damani has previously led his family office’s alternative investments and has backed startups such as Oyo, Rapido, and Purplle, among others.

“The venture confronted seemingly insurmountable challenges during the pandemic, facing a substantial setback. Yet, the resilience and innovative mindset of the founding team shone through. Their pivot to an asset-financing model unlocked considerable capital and enabled them to transition to an asset-light model in a traditionally capital-intensive sector”, Damani said about Everest Fleet. Everest Fleet founder and chief executive Siddharth Ladsariya is the biggest shareholder in the company. Its other investors include Uber, Paragon Partners, and InCred Capital, among others.

On Artha Venture Fund’s plans, Damani said that it had drawn 75% capital from its sponsors for its Rs 225 crore fund but has started charting plans to launch a second fund through which it will continue to back early-stage ventures that have proven revenue. "The cheque sizes will increase moving forward because the cost of doing business has increased, but we will target companies that have started drawing customers and have achieved monthly revenue of around Rs 15 lakh”.