Roots Ventures ropes in Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma as anchor investor

Mumbai-based sector-agnostic investment firm Roots Ventures has roped in Paytm founder and CEO Vijayshekhar Sharma as an anchor investor for its maiden fund.

In a statement, the company stated that the target fund corpus, which is to the tune of Rs 200 crore, will also come with a greenshoe option of Rs 100 crore. The investment firm has already mobilised 20% of the target fund corpus from anchor investors and partners, it added.

Japan Vyas, the founder of the fund, said that Pravin Gandhi of Seedfund, Sandeep Kohli, ex-CEO of Yum International for the Indian subcontinent, and Kushal and Chaitanya Desai of Apar Industries are also key investors in the fund.

Vyas was one of the early shareholders in Paytm when he invested from his first fund at IDFC, Sharma said.

The fund will chase opportunities arising out of increasing per capita income, changing spending pattern of the consumers and technology disruption around these segments, the statement added.

Roots Ventures

Roots Ventures was founded in July 2018 by Sixth Sense Ventures co-founder Vyas, who also previously headed the alternative investment arm of IDFC.

The investment firm also counts Ravinder Vashisht, a former executive at PE firm BanyanTree as its partner. Vashisht managed the NBFC portfolio arm of the mid-market PE firm. Prior to that , he served at IDFC Investment Advisors.

It also counts CEO of Canada-based Paytm Labs (Paytm’s subsidiary) Harinder Takhar and Times Internet’s vice president of corporate development Miten Sampat as advisors on its fund.

“Our portfolio will comprise early-stage, growth and small mid-listed investments. Our fundraise is on track and we are in advance discussions with two fund of funds and looking to close our fundraise over the next 2-3 months,” Vyas stated.

Over the last few months, the investment firm has closed six investments across sectors that include consumer products, consumer tech and fintech. It is also in advanced stages of of closing two more investments in the mobility and consumer space, it stated.

As per information available on its website, some of its disclosed investments include Mumbai-based pet grooming brand CaptainZack, products and experience discovery platform Smytten, Hyderabad based beauty products brand Cocoon, Gurugram-based sweets manufacturer Misht, and Bengaluru- and Gurugram-based TeaMonk.