Unicorn India Ventures Announces First Close of Fund at USD 12 Mn

New Delhi, Mar 30 (PTI) Mumbai-based early stage fund house Unicorn India Ventures on Monday announced the first close of its equity fund at USD 12 million.

The fund -- the second one for Unicorn India -- was announced last year. Fund II saw participation from domestic investors comprising family offices and investors from the first fund.

"The (second) Fund expects to reach final close in next 12 months, which is expected to see participation from large institutional investors. With the first close, Unicorn India has also announced its first investment in a Trivandrum -based startup SaScan Meditech," a statement said.

SaScan is a neo-diagnostics startup developing integrated hardware and software solutions for medical diagnostics. Founded in 2016, SaScan is currently focusing on bringing 'OralScan' to the market. OralScan is a hand-held fully automated solution for non-intrusive oral cancer screening.

The company is also working on clinical trials for a device to screen for another common type of cancer.

With the new funds, SaScan will explore the possibility of developing its proprietary technology for the diagnosis of other types of epithelial cell carcinomas and pre-cancerous abnormalities with a vision to build a comprehensive diagnostics solutions range for easy, accessible and early cancer detection, the statement said.

"Our commitment to nurture Indian startups is unwavering and we will keep scouting for innovative ventures as done in fund-I. Having announced our first investment from fund-II simultaneously is a testimony to that," Anil Joshi, Managing Partner at Unicorn India Venture, said.

From the new fund, Unicorn India will participate in pre-series A and upwards rounds. The cheque size is expected to be a million dollars. The fund house expects to invest in 20 companies from the second fund.

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner at Unicorn India Ventures, said the first fund has been performing well.

"Many companies from the first fund like Open Bank, Genrobotic, Sequretek, Smartcoin are scaling up faster than its peers. They have already caught the attention of many top-notch international funds. With this second fund, our hope to continue our track record of identifying innovative business models with faster scalability across sectors B2B, SaaS, healthTech, robotics, gaming and digital content," he added.

The first fund had seen Unicorn invest in 18 companies, including VLCC VanityCube, Inc42, Sequretek, Pharmarack, GrabonRent, Inntot, Genrobotic, SectorQube, Perfit, NeuroEquilibrium, SmartCoin, Open Bank, Boxx.ai, Clootrack and Openapp.

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