Aditya Birla Ventures (ABV), the venture capital arm of the $70-billion market cap Aditya Birla Group that backs new-age, high-growth businesses, has been awarded by Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association (IVCA), the apex industry body for alternative assets.
ABV has won the outstanding new fund award in the ‘IVCA PE-VC Awards 2023’ in Mumbai on Wednesday. “This is the award in recognition of investors who are investing for the first time in the Indian ecosystem, and the jury recognised Aditya Birla Ventures as the winner,” IVCA said in a statement.
The jury comprised industry heavyweights, including Deepak Bagla (MD and CEO, Invest India), UK Sinha (Former SEBI Chairman), Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Founder, Info Edge India), and Vivek Pandit (Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company), Anita Marangoly George (Founding Partner, Edhina), and Cate Ambrose (CEO and Board Member, GPCA).
“Our PM propelled the Startup India Movement as a harbinger of New India and the start of the 'Amrit Kaal'. I would like to thank all those who invested in India and showed confidence in our innovators and trust in the Indian Growth Story,” Invest India CEO Deepak Bagla said on the occasion.
ABV, founded by Aryaman Vikram Birla, is an early-stage fund that cuts cheques for startups in seed, Series A and Series B rounds. It has invested in sectors such as consumer tech, edtech, fintech, healthtech, enterprise SaaS, agritech, mobility and more. Some of its portfolio companies include MSME-enablement platform Dukaan, digital credit infra company Finbox, D2C jewellery brand GIVA, health-tech startup Eka Care, and dairy-tech company Moo Farm, among others. All these investments were made in 2022 itself.
Despite the global capital market slowdown, PE and VC investments in India totalled over $50 billion last year, accounting for 60 per cent of all FDI investments into the country, as per IVCA.
Rajat Tandon, President of IVCA, said: “The IVCA PE-VC Awards honours PE/ VC funds, both global and Indian, who have demonstrated some outstanding fiduciary responsibility to their investors and ecosystem in the past year. Their contribution is a testament to the rapidly growing investor ecosystem in India which is making headway in the global context.”
The IVCA Awards also recognised several other VC funds across categories for their fundraising performance in 2022.
These included:
* Domestic Private Equity: Eversource Capital for raising $ 741 million
* International Venture Capital: Accel for raising $650 million from both domestic and foreign LPs
* Domestic Venture Capital: Fireside Ventures for raising $225 million
* Venture Debt Funds: Trifecta Capital for closing $150 million in its third fund, and further exercising green shoe option of $50 Million
* Corporate Venture Capital: Bertelsmann India Investments for best-performing fund
* Social Impact: Northern Arc Capital for investments in startups like Gramophone, Battery Smart, Ecozen, BluSmart
Besides this, IVCA also awarded KKR for the best exit (Max Healthcare) in the Private Equity category, and Chiratae (FirstCry, Unbxd, Active.ai) for the best exits in the Venture Capital category.
Quadria Capital, meanwhile, won the ‘Outstanding Action for Gender Diversity’ award for making the investing ecosystem more gender-balanced.