Looking to invest in 25 startups this year: Accel

Accel, the early-stage venture capital major, is planning to make investments in as many as 25 Indian startups this year, and may launch an India-focused fund in the next couple of years, an executive at the firm said.

- ARYAMAN GUPTA

The firm had made 17 investments in 2023 and 51 in 2022, according to data from Tracxn, a market intelligence firm.

"We look at (launching) a fund every three to four years. We still have a lot of dry powder in our current fund and expect to invest in at least 15-25 companies this year," Prashanth Prakash, Partner, Accel, told Business Standard.

Accel had unveiled its last fund, which was its seventh India-focused fund, back in March 2022 with a total corpus of $650 million. Its next fund, Prakash said, will be launched after all the dry powder from its current fund is deployed.

The Silicon Valley venture capital firm, one of the earliest investors in India, has a large portfolio of unicorn startups in the country. Some of its notable investments include ecommerce major Flipkart, Freshworks, food delivery firm Swiggy and used-car marketplace Spinny. It also invested in online learning platform Vedantu, business-to-business marketplaces Zetwerk, Infra.Market and Moglix, among others.