Sorin Investments, a VC firm set up by KKR’s Sanjay Nayar and Caravel Group’s Angad Banga, has raised $100 Mn (INR 798 Cr) from multiple family offices for its debut fund.
Sorin Investments’ first close saw investments from Henry Kravis, cofounder, KKR, and Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman, Hero Enterprises, and a few more family offices from India and abroad. Nayar and Banga invested their capital in Sorin’s debut fund as sponsor commitments.
Sorin Investments will write a dozen cheques worth between $2 Mn and $10 Mn for startups in Series A to Series C.
“We’ve got seven to eight families to invest in the first close of the fund, both local and international, including Henry Kravis and Sunil Munjal. We will be investing from early series A to early series C,” Nayar told Mint.
The two seasoned investors plan to raise $130 million for Sorin’s debut fund, with a greenshoe option of $30 million. Last week, news of a VC venture from Nayar and Banga broke; according to Bloomberg, Sorin Investments raised $125 million from the Nayar and Banga family offices.
The Nayar family, led by Sanjay and Falguni Nayar, Nykaa’s founders, owns a 52 percent stake in the company. The eCommerce startup went public last year, and its shares opened today at INR 1,420. (July 18).
Nayar, whose experience includes decades in banking and private equity, said that he did not want to invest as a family office or angel. Opening an institutional investment firm would give them the chance to have a bigger say in the direction of the companies they are looking to partner with.
About Sorin
Apart from fintech, Sorin will also be keen on investments in consumer, SaaS (software-as-a-service), health-tech, and proptech.
“The latest iteration of India’s technology revolution will be homegrown Indian companies that are building technologies that can be used around the world.
These include consumer, SaaS, fintech, healthcare, and even protect. All of these are areas where India has a massive scale domestically. These businesses can be built for the domestic market and then exported out,” Banga said.
Sorin’s investment philosophy is to be an “industrialist investor” and not just a financial investor, Banga said. “We’ve always thought about ourselves as industrialist investors.
We like to try and have a lasting impact on the businesses that we deploy capital into by developing deep relationships and building insight and trust. That’s the kind of approach that we’ve had in private equity and now we’ll bring it to early stage growth in India,” he said.
