India’s mid-market gets a boost as Trident Growth launches ₹2,000 cr maiden fund

The fund aims to lead or co-lead the Series B+ investments in fast-growing companies, writing cheques of ₹150-170 crore for a significant minority stake.

Although it is sector-agnostic, the growth stage private equity fund will invest in key themes such as consumer, financial services, enterprise technology, manufacturing, and healthcare.

“While it is very pertinent for us to be sector-agnostic, much of investments come under three broad buckets – consumption for the evolving middle class that includes categories like financial services, healthcare and education, secondly- the China+1 supply chain strategy and lastly, enterprise technology which involves make in India products for the world,” Trident’s managing partner Atul Gupta told Mint.

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Founded by Gupta, Rajesh Ramaiah and Pravan Malhotra, Trident Growth, through its maiden fund, will invest in 10-12 companies that have strong unit metrics, and ability to deliver scale with a sustainable path to profitability.

Growth strategy

With a first close of ₹1,000 crore, the investment firm will exercise its green shoe option to raise an equivalent amount by the end of this year. While 20-30% of the capital is expected to come from international fund of funds and institutions, a bulk of the corpus is backed by domestic capital.

Fund of funds is an investment strategy where a fund invests in other investment funds rather than directly in individual assets like debt or equity.

In August, Mint first reported on Manipal group’s chairman Ranjan Pai’s interest to invest in the fund. Other startup founders of companies including Lenskart, PolicyBazaar, Persistent Systems, Livspace and KreditBee alongside sovereign fund of funds, Sidbi and Self Reliant India Fund (SRI), leading family offices and general partners of prominent funds have also invested in the fund.

The new fund aims to bridge the gap for companies looking to raise their series B and C rounds. To be clear, the investor ecosystem is crowded with early-stage funds–through various institutions such as micro-VCs, high net worth individuals (HNIs) and other mainstream offices, and late-stage funds dominated by global players issuing larger cheques.

“This has left the mid-market stages with a lot of undisrupted potential, which is what we have identified as a play for ourselves to invest in,” Ramaiah said. “It is overall a nice position to be in as we have a good set of companies coming in and with the evolving late-stage buyout story, exits through other routes (such as secondaries) have also become quite conducive apart from the IPO-market,” he added.

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The three partners will engage closely with portfolio companies by leveraging founder networks to provide mentorship along with an experienced operating partner network that will assist companies with key functional support as they scale up.

The former executives of Premji Invest and International Finance Corporation have actively invested in several Indian startups that include Lenskart, Policybazaar, KreditBee, Myntra, Flipkart, Purplle, FirstCry, BigBasket, Amagi and Moglix among others. They also have a track record of exits with 14 unicorns (startups with a billion-dollar valuation) and 8 IPOs/M&A from their prior investments.

Meanwhile, Trident has already completed its first investment in SaaS company Spotdraft’s $54 million series B round alongside Vertex Growth earlier this year, and is in the final stages of closing its next investment. With a strong pipeline through the rest of the year, Malhotra said the fund will target an ownership of 8-20% in portfolio companies. “We will back founders who want to build really solid businesses in a sustainable way and with lesser burn so they don’t need to keep raising capital and can ultimately own higher ownerships,” Gupta concluded.