Stellaris Venture Partners, an early-stage investor, announced the raising of $225 million for its second India-focused fund, coinciding with an unprecedented funding environment fueling the domestic startup and technology sector. Stellaris' corpus is nearly three times the size of its $90 million maiden fund, which launched four years ago.

This places the four-year-old Bengaluru firm among the largest in India's seed-to-series A stage funds, a segment that has seen increased interest in recent years.

Stellaris, founded in 2017 by three former Helion Venture Partners executives, Ritesh Banglani, Alok Goyal, and Rahul Chowdhri, is part of a new breed of funds that emerged following India's startup ecosystem's first bull cycle. In December 2015, the trio exited Helion, one of the oldest homegrown venture capital firms, to focus solely on technology investments.

Stellaris, which has previously invested in consumer brand Mamaearth, software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm Whatfix, and health tech platform Mfine, has raised 80 percent of the capital for Fund-II from global limited partners (LPs), with the remainder coming from Indian entrepreneurs, family offices, and others.

Stellaris was one of the first venture capital firms to raise Fund-I from a group of around 50 startup entrepreneurs and business professionals.

While the previous fund secured nearly half of its commitments in rupee capital, this has decreased significantly as more international investors join in.

The second fund has increased its foreign institutional exposure and now has 75 percent of its capital in US dollars. Members of its Founder Network include BigBasket's Hari Menon, Zomato's Pankaj Chaddha, Delhivery's Sahil Barua, Makemytrip's Deep Kalra, and Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal.

Banglani stated that as the number of investable opportunities grows, Stellaris will support more startups in the future. While Fund-I previously invested in 19 companies, it is now expected to invest in 25-30 startups.

“We needed this size to make larger upfront investments, to back our conviction with dollars. It also allows us to support founders for longer. Now, if we enter at the seed stage, we can back companies for four funding rounds and that requires capital. It helps the entrepreneur as they have the support to go on and execute for next 18 months, while also protecting our ownership in good companies for an extended period of time.”

The fund had originally planned to raise $160 million but decided to increase its goal by more than $50 million.