Unicorn India Ventures was founded in 2016 when our partners, Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar, brought their complementary skill sets together to pursue a common goal of assisting determined and visionary startup founders in scaling their businesses to new heights and developing the investor ecosystem in India.
The investment thesis for this Fund revolved around the countrywide digitization wave as a result of higher internet penetration, increase in smartphone users, ease of doing business and the overall prosperity of the country.
Unicorn India Ventures Fund-I was actively deployed in new-age startups, with both partners utilizing their extensive networks and deep understanding of the startup ecosystem and businesses to invest in pioneering ideas and innovative founders. Several companies that received investments from Unicorn India Ventures in 2016 experienced multiple up rounds in late 2017, which further bolstered our conviction and confidence in our investment thesis.
Unicorn India Ventures was founded in 2016 when our partners, Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar, brought their complementary skill sets together to pursue a common goal of assisting determined and visionary startup founders in scaling their businesses to new heights and developing the investor ecosystem in India.
The investment thesis for this Fund revolved around the countrywide digitization wave as a result of higher internet penetration, increase in smartphone users, ease of doing business and the overall prosperity of the country.
The Fund-I was in the penultimate year of the investment phase. We found novel and pathbreaking opportunity which bridged the SME banking enablement gap through its innovative digital first approach, Open Bank. By this time we had invested in companies like Sequretek, Inc42, SmartCoin, Open Bank etc which later went on to become industry leaders in their domains.
In 2019, as Fund-I concluded its investment phase, we experienced multiple successful up rounds, including Open's notable Series B round just one year after our initial seed investment. With this success, we began planning the launch of a new fund vehicle, complete with a clear investment thesis for each sector, marking the beginning of a new chapter in our investment journey.
The year 2020 was marked by significant volatility and a period of intense learning, as it signaled the beginning of a new era. While the pandemic brought considerable challenges for everyone, technology emerged as a key driver in this paradigm shift, leading to a transformation in many aspects of daily life.
The widespread adoption of digital technologies proved to be a boon for organizations that facilitated this shift, including the majority of our portfolio companies.
In 2021, we resumed our active search for new and innovative investment opportunities. We directed our investments towards determined startup founders with pioneering ideas. Notably, two of our high-performing portfolio companies from Fund-I, namely SmartCoin and Open, successfully secured funding for their Series B and Series C rounds, respectively.
As we entered the fifth year of Fund-I, we initiated planning for potential exits in the mid-to-late 2021 period. This strategic move resulted in some promising outcomes in the early months of 2022.
In 2022, we reached the sixth year of our first fund and were pleased to report a total value to paid-in (TVPI) ratio of approximately 9x. Furthermore, we delivered an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) return of around 60% after factoring in fees, to our valued investors.
Open achieved a significant milestone by becoming India's 100th unicorn and the first neobank to attain this distinction.
Through a partial exit from Open and complete exits from six other portfolio companies, we were able to deliver more than a two-fold return on investment to our limited partners (LPs) with one year remaining in the fund's lifecycle.
Our investments from Fund-II have demonstrated exceptional growth, with several of them raising multiple rounds of funding in the first year after our initial investment. Presently, Fund-II has been fully deployed, with 80% of the corpus reserved for follow-on investments in promising breakout companies.