Avataar Capital closes $100 mn opportunities fund to double down on B2B, SaaS bets

Avataar Capital Management has announced the final close of its $100 million Opportunities Fund for top-up investments in select portfolio companies as well as new investments.

The fund has seen participation from large institutional limited partners (LP) across Europe and US, the firm said in a statement.

The fund will continue to invest in tech-enabled business-to-business marketplaces and SaaS companies in the growth stage. The Opportunities Fund will write cheques ranging between $10 million and $30 million, to be deployed over the next nine months.

The fund follows Avataar’s maiden fund of $300 million announced in September 2019 which had Boston-headquartered fund of funds Harbourvest, as its sole LP.

The fund was founded in 2019 by former executive director at Norwest venture Partners, Mohan Kumar and former chief operating officer at Freshworks, Nishant Rao.

The fund also announced three investments and announced executive appointments to expand its team in the US.

“We have made three new investments and also expanded our team in the US with two senior operating executives – Mike Mulica a mobile and internet industry veteran,” said Nishant Rao in the statement. He further added that George Thangadurai, former general manager of strategy and product management at Intel Corporation had also joined Avataar.

From the new fund, Avataar has led the Series C round of San Francisco headquartered talent engagement and recruitment platform Sense HQ, apart from the Series B round of New-Delhi headquartered travel and hotel software provider, RateGain as part of new investments. The Series B round of RateGain also saw participation from Accel, Google Ventures and TA Associates. While the size of the round was undisclosed for both the companies, TechCircle reported that RateGain had received a commitment of $15 million from Avataar Ventures in August 2020.

The third investment, made from the first fund, was in HEAL which has acquired the IP and assets of Appnomic. While founding partner at Avataar, Mohan Kumar did not disclose the size of the deal, he said that the company had hired new management with Thangadurai acting as the CEO of the entity to mark a pivot in the company’s product.

Other notable companies in the fund’s portfolio include cloud analytics company Manthan Software, omnichannel customer engagement platform for retailers, Capillary Technologies, logistics platform ElasticRun among others.