Anicut Capital Floats ₹250 Cr Fund To Back 20 Early Stage Startups

Alternative investment firm Anicut Capital has launched its second early-stage investment vehicle, Grand Anicut Seed Fund, with a target corpus of ₹175 Cr (about $18.2 Mn). The fund will also have a greenshoe option of ₹75 Cr ($7.8 Mn).

The SEBI-registered Category I fund will look to back more than 20 startups across deeptech, enterprise tech, consumer and financial services. It plans to dish out initial cheque sizes in the range of ₹5 Cr to ₹8 Cr. 

Speaking with Inc42, Anicut Capital partner Ajay Anand said that the fund is close to achieving its first close at around $10 Mn, which is likely to be announced next month. 

The fund is primarily targeting domestic family offices and high net-worth individuals (HNIs) to raise the corpus, while also seeking participation from institutional investors such as SIDBI.

The fund has already committed capital to three startups across pre-seed, seed and pre-Series A stages. Without disclosing the names, Anand said one of the ventures is building a subscription-led platform to make luxury products more affordable, while another is a design-first consumer brand focused on desktop and lifestyle accessories. The third is a deeptech startup developing a fully functional robotic kiosk for healthy beverages and smoothies.

Almost 70% of the fund’s corpus will be deployed towards new bets, while the remaining 30% will be reserved for follow-on rounds. Anicut expects to deploy the fund over three years. It plans to build the core portfolio during the first two years and use the third year for follow-on investments. Anand told Inc42 

Overall, the fund plans to invest in 10 startups by the end of the current financial year, including the three deals already committed.

Anicut’s Early-Stage Playbook 

The alternate investment firm’s new fund builds on its existing Grand Anicut Angel Fund (GAAF) via which it has backed 68 early-stage startups since 2021.

According to the firm, these portfolio startups have collectively raised more than ₹6,000 Cr in follow-on funding, while their aggregate revenue has grown 10X since Anicut’s initial investments. GAAF’s portfolio includes the likes Agnikul Cosmos, GIVA, CapGrid, InspeCity, Leumas, Neeman’s, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, Snapmint, Salty, GRIP, GalaxEye and E-Plane, among others.

Unlike GAAF that tapped into a deal-by-deal investment model, the new fund, as per Anand, will follow the blind-pool portfolio approach. For context, this model involves investors committing capital to a fund much before portfolio startups are identified.

“We were doing this over the years on a deal-by-deal basis as an angel fund structure. The only difference… is that rather than being deal by deal, now we have been creating a portfolio sort of approach for our LPs (limited partners),” he said.

Founded in 2015 by Ashwin Chadha and IAS Balamurugan, Anicut Capital manages seven funds across debt and equity strategies. It claims to have more than ₹4,500 Cr in active assets under management (AUM).

The firm claims to have already seen two liquidity events this year, namely Earth Rhythm (acquired by Nykaa) and SaaS platform Swipesy, which was acquired by a US company. It is now also looking at partial exits from other mature portfolio companies and expects to generate around $10 Mn-$12 Mn in cash exits for its LPs this year.

New Fund Launches Pick Up Pace 

The development comes as Indian early stage funding is showing signs of resilience despite a broader slowdown in startup investments.

As per Inc42 data, seed-stage funding rose 18% YoY to more than $478 Mn in the first half (H1) of 2026 despite late-stage investments declining 29% YoY to $2.2 Bn. Early stage ventures accounted for 208 deals during the period, compared with 66 at the late stage.

Overall, funding into Indian startups fell 9% YoY to $5.2 Bn in H1 2026. Nevertheless, investors have continued to roll out new funds across sectors and investment stages. 

Just a day ago, VC firm Inflexor Ventures marked the first close of its ₹1,250 Cr fund at ₹400 Cr to invest in science, engineering and technology startups. 

In June, early-stage deeptech investor YourNest Venture Capital also closed its ₹400 Cr continuation vehicle, while HealthQuad announced the first close of its ₹1,700 Cr Fund III at ₹550 Cr.

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