“India’s looking as sweet as Kulfi!“ to 500 Startups at the moment, as it has launched 500 Kulfi, a $25 million India-focussed fund. The fund will be sector agnostic, but will focus on FinTech, EdTech, Health & Wellness, Data Analytics, Content and SaaS and SMB.
The VC seed fund is bullish on India given that it is currently the fastest growing economy, with its GDP expected to grow at 7.6% this year. “India has the second largest Internet population in the world after China, more than 300 million users. The number of smartphones in use in India is set to reach over 700 million by 2020. The median age in India is 27.3 years old.”, says a post announcing the launch of the fund.
While the accelerator remains mindful of the overall global sobering down of VC enthusiasm, it still remains optimistic in the long term. “While the industry has been tweeting and blogging about doom and gloom hitting unicorns and startups alike, we believe the long-term opportunity remains as solid as ever.”, says Pankaj Jain, partner at 500 startups.
500 startups has already invested in around 50 Indian startups, including ZipDial, SourceEasy, Instamojo, CultureAlley, SilverPush, KartRocket, and Headout. It had done over 20 deals in India last year. Speaking at the Surge conference in Bangalore, the fund’s head Dave McClure had said that 500 Startups could have as many as 100 Indian startups in its portfolio going forward.