Venture capital firm PeerCapital has achieved the first closing of its first fund at a cost of roughly Rs 300 crore ($37.5 million), managing partner Ankur Pahwa said. According to Pahwa, the aim of Rs 600 crore ($75 million) will be reached after the fund's final close of the remaining Rs 300 crore in September 2023, while there is also a green shoe option of Rs 300 crore.

In order to pool foreign capital, the fund is set up as an India Category II Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) with a feeder company in Delaware, United States. The fund intends to provide up to $2 million in early checks for deals in the seed to series A stage. Apart from Pahwa, the managing partners of the Bengaluru-based VC firm include Karthik Prabhakar, the former MD of growth-stage venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures, and Rohit MA, the former MD and co-founder of Cloudnine Group of Hospitals.

Pahwa was with EY for just over 16 years before to joining PeerCapital, where he most recently held the position of partner and national leader of the firm's e-commerce, consumer internet, and startups practise in India. The fund will concentrate on making investments in software-as-a-service, consumer technology enablers, and fintech (SaaS). Pahwa and Rohit had roughly 30 separate portfolio firms warehoused for PeerCapital before the first closing.

In the language of venture capital, warehousing refers to a startup share that an investor purchases prior to establishing a fund. "Many of these are a result of the access Rohit and I had to start-up businesses, but at the time we lacked the institutional capital to bank these businesses. In these businesses, the cheque sizes were reduced. We couldn't contribute the required minimum of $500,000 from the fund at this time. However, we had excellent access to the founders. We made the decision to physically deposit the money before storing it and transferring it to the fund, according to Pahwa.

Three businesses have so far joined PeerCapital's fund home furnishings marketplace Vaaree, managed B2B marketplace Saveo, and influencer marketing platform One Impression from the pool of 30 businesses. The company has made direct investments in three other businesses: Furrl, a social commerce platform; Doosra, a provider of virtual and secondary phone numbers; and UrSpayce, a cloud-based workplace management system.