Founded in 2020, Aroa Venture Partners, a venture capital firm known for investments in companies like Unacademy, Urban Company, and Cred, is introducing a new fund with a goal of Rs 400 crore (approximately $50 million).
The Aroa Opportunities Fund officially registered as a category II alternative investment fund (AIF) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in October 2022. Founder and managing partner Gaurav Gulati reported that the fund has already received in-principle commitments exceeding Rs 400 crore.
“We plan on investing from seed to Series C. From seed to Series A, we will always lead the round and Series B and C, we will not lead but instead co-invest,” Gulati said.
As a greenshoe option, the fund has reserved an additional Rs 400 crore on top of the final fund corpus, Gulati mentioned.
The firm intends to invest checks ranging from Rs 4 crore to Rs 40 crore in 20-25 startups using the new fund.
Gulati shared that Aroa Venture Partners utilizes a feeder vehicle in Singapore, facilitating the aggregation of investment capital to be invested in the master fund.
“Our approach is largely multi-sector. However, real estate and Web3 are on the negative list. Real estate as a sector has matured, and we believe there are sufficient pools of capital available to take ventures in this space forward. Web3 is an area that is very compelling, but we have yet to build conviction around scalable and commercial use cases,” he added.
Gulati founded Aroa Venture Partners as a solo general partner fund, with Oyo founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal as its sole limited partner. In 2022, the firm’s investor manager entity, ScaleX Partners, underwent rebranding to become Aroa Venture Partners. Having invested over Rs 100 crore in 40 startups, spanning early- and growth-stage companies.
Before establishing Aroa Venture Partners, Gulati served as the Chief Operating Officer at Innov8, a co-working space services provider acquired by Oyo in 2019. Additionally, he co-founded Purist, a corporate food service venture later acquired by Curefit.
