Palo Alto/Bangalore, July 06, 2021. Iron Pillar today announced an investment of $10M from Allana Group in its Fund II. The 150 years old Group has manufacturing and distribution in 20 countries and has market leadership in oils, proteins, several FMCG brands and agri products. In 2017, the Group set up a corporate venture arm and has since made investments in e-commerce, grocery products, challenger brands, media and healthcare. The Group specializes in consumer industries with a strong focus on ASEAN, MENA and India. Adil Allana, Supervisory Board member of the Group, will join Iron Pillar as a Board Partner.
Iron Pillar also added three senior professionals to its investment team. Sajid Fazalbhoy, previously with Blume Ventures, has joined Iron Pillar as Partner. Pavan Gupte, with more than twenty years of alternative investments experience with firms like CVCI, KKR and Hermes GPE has joined as a Board Partner. Rahul Garg, previously with Kalaari Capital and Lehman Brothers, has joined as Principal.
Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner, Iron Pillar said – “We have an existing relationship with Adil and Allana Group through their investment in FreshToHome, where they have added significant value to the company in operations and international expansion. This is the logical next step for us to take our fruitful partnership forward to support many more of our portfolio companies. As we continue to build Iron Pillar, we look forward to collaborating with more large Indian and global business groups who can help our portfolio companies improve their operations and expand across US, Middle East and Asia Pacific.”
Iron Pillar’s portfolio includes technology companies like Uniphore, FreshtoHome, Servify and CoreStack that are built from India for Indian and global markets. In 2020, Iron Pillar has also set up ‘Iron Pillar Network’, a stellar line up of senior technology executives from companies/institutions like Amazon, Bertelsman, Careem, Cloudera, Discord, Google, Intertrust, JLL, McGraw Hill, Optum, SAP, Snowflake, SRI, UPenn, University of Utah, Zoho etc to help its portfolio companies expand globally.
About Iron Pillar
Iron Pillar is a venture growth investor specializing in mid stage technology companies “Built from India”. Founded in January 2016, Iron Pillar provides growth capital and active help in global business expansion to companies in the enterprise and consumer technology sectors. The Fund backs founding teams who want to create $1B+ enterprise value companies that are built to last. Additional information on Iron Pillar is available at https://ironpillarfund.com
