Gemba Capital launches its second fund of INR 250 crore to invest in ‘Platform-first’ businesses over the next 3 years

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Gemba Capital, a leading Sebi-registered Micro VC in the country, has announced the launch of its second fund with a corpus of INR 250 crore, including a green shoe option of INR 50 crore.

Fund-II will invest in~30 early-stage ‘Platform-first’ businesses across 3 focus sectors – Fintech, Consumer tech and B2B Platformswith first cheque of INR 5 Crores and ~30% reserve ratio for making follow-on investments. Digital “Platform-first” businesses are those which can create compounding moats through ecosystem creation, network effects or ability to stack value add layers.

Gemba Capital founded in 2018, is a high conviction, thesis led investor which writes low friction collaborative checks. ItsFund I of INR 70 croreis2022 vintagewith an average cheque size of INR 2 crore. Fund I was raised through investments from Family offices, Founders, and CXOs.Since inception, Gemba Capital has been consistent in their investment strategy of investing only is pre-seed/seed rounds across their focus sectors, investing in less than 10 deals a year and focusing on value addition in the portfolio companies. The firm has developed a proprietary ‘Founder Market Fit Framework’ that assists in identifying the right teams to back.

Commenting on the announcement, Adith Podhar, General Partner, Gemba Capital, said, “Our journey has evolved from investing proprietary capital to running anangel syndicate and then raising and investing from our INR 70 crore Fund-I. We are now looking to partner with institutional LPs for our INR 250 crore Fund-II. The Indian early-stagestartup ecosystem needs more institutional capital to be deployed through Single-Stage VC funds like us”, he adds.

“We are one of the leading institutional micro-VC funds in India at the seed stage and we remain committed to being a seed investor. Founders recognize the immense value we bring to the cap-table, which sets us apart. The fund has supported its portfolio companies in multiple areas, including customer introductions, fundraising and strategic planning”, adds Govind Lohia, Principal at Gemba Capital.

Emerging VC fund managers in India mustnavigate a challenging fundraise environment, but those who implement robust processesand maintain disciplined portfolio construct will always attract capital. Gemba Capital has a solid performance track record with successful exits and up rounds. It is targeting to achieve Final Close ofFund-II by the end of the year.