Mamaearth backer Stellaris raises $300 mn fund, unveils 3-yr investment plan

As venture capital (VC) deals continue to surge in India this year, Stellaris Venture Partners, an early backer of Mamaearth and Whatfix, has closed its third fund of $300 million. The company aims to invest in 25-30 startups over the next three years as part of its early-stage tech investment strategy. With this new fund, Stellaris has over $600 million in assets under management.

Rahul Chowdhri, partner, Stellaris Venture Partners says India’s startup ecosystem has transformed, with a 4x growth in the deal flow and a rise in repeat entrepreneurs and founders from successful startups. "With this new fund, we’re excited to back founders using technology to solve deep problems. Our team, consisting of former entrepreneurs and business builders, brings deep expertise and global networks in key sectors like consumer tech, AI, SaaS and financial services to support our portfolio companies throughout their journey.”

Stellaris has also announced key leadership appointments as part of the launch. Naman Lahoty, a repeat entrepreneur and previously a principal with the firm, has been appointed as a partner. Lahoty joined Stellaris in 2019 to focus on consumer investments and has invested in AI webcomic startup Dashtoon and D2C consumer brand Zouk, among others.

Chetan GMS, previously SVP finance, will now be the firm’s CFO, while Preseedha Premnath has been appointed as the firm’s general counsel. Additionally, Vardhan Dharnidharka, an AI/ML engineering leader previously based in New York, has joined as an investment principal and relocated to Bangalore.

Launched in 2017, Stellaris has backed 44 tech startups across two funds, 60% of which were inception-stage businesses. The firm typically participates as a lead investor in Seed and Series A rounds of startups and continues to support its portfolio companies across multiple rounds of financing.

Stellaris is an early investor in consumer brand Mamaearth, which went public last year, and in Whatfix, a digital adoption platform that recently raised a $125 Million Series E round. More recently, it backed EV financing startup Turno, credit-on-UPI provider Kiwi, AI SaaS companies Orbitshift and CARPL.ai, credit improvement platform Goodscore and D2C consumer brand Nestasia.

“With its $4 trillion GDP growing at 6-8% per annum, India is one of the few markets in the world offering both scale and growth to deliver venture returns. A combination of unique public digital infrastructure, a young population, mass adoption of smartphones and receptivity of public markets to technology startups makes India an attractive destination for venture capital,” says Ritesh Banglani, partner, Stellaris Venture Partners.

India Sees VC Funding Boost

India saw 883 venture capital (VC) funding deals worth $8.3 billion from January to September (Q1-Q3) 2024. This marked a year-on-year (YoY) improvement of 7.3% in deal volume, while the growth in funding value stood significantly high at 52.8%, according to the latest data shared by the U.K.-based data and analytics major GlobalData.

In the nine-month period of 2024, India also accounted for 7.2% of the total number of VC deals globally, while its share in the corresponding disclosed funding value stood at 4.5%.

As per market intelligence firm Tracxn data, early-stage funding in 2024 year-to-date in this space witnessed funding of $2.2 billion, while the first three quarters of 2023 and 2022 had witnessed $2.5 billion and $6.4 billion in funding respectively. Seed-stage funding witnessed a total of $743 million in 2024 till date, while the first three quarters of 2023 and 2022 saw $890 million and $1.6 billion, respectively.