Sequoia raises $530 million for Indian health, tech start-ups

Sequoia Capital has raised $530 million (Rs 3,100 crore) for early stage investments in India.  With a total corpus of $2 billion to manage, Sequoia India now expects to "double down" on early stage investments across technology, consumer and healthcare.

 

"We are big believers in global technology companies being built out of India," said Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India.

 

"The new fund will have a disproportionate focus on early and early growth stage companies,' said Singh who leads the India office along with Abhay Pandey, GV Ravishankar, Mohit Bhatnagar and VT Bharadwaj.

 

The new fund which has a ten year horizon will deploy capital of up to $200 million every year in Indian ventures as well as in South-east Asia. For Sequoia India the challenge is to replicate the marquee exit performance of its parent firm which recently clocked one of the biggest exits in the industry when it earned $3 billion on an initial investment of about $60 million in messaging firm WhatsApp bought by Facebook earlier this year.

 

Singh said his firm is now returning more capital every year than it is deploying on investments. Some of the companies in the Indian portfolio companies like Mu-Sigma, Just Dial and Micromax command a valuation of over $1 billion (Rs 5,877 crore).