Pentathlon Ventures Closes Second Fund At ₹255 Cr To Back B2B SaaS Startups

Early stage VC firm Pentathlon Ventures has marked the final close of its second B2B tech fund at ₹255 Cr (₹27.1 Mn).

The fund is backed by a set of family offices, HNIs, entrepreneurs across India, the United States, among others. 

The fund was launched in September 2023 with a target corpus of ₹450 Cr and aims to back 16-20 B2B SaaS startups catering to segments like ecommerce enablement, fintech, vertical SaaS, applied AI, sustainable tech and healthtech. 

The average ticket size of the Pentathlon’s investment is pegged to be in the range of ₹4-8 Cr.

Pentathlon claims to have backed eight startups via the fund till now, including investments in OneStack, AyushPay, Vodex and ElevateHQ. It intends to back startups via the corpus raised for Fund II for five years. 

“The early progress across the portfolio, including multiple companies achieving over 3X growth since investment, reinforces our belief in our investment approach. We remain focused on disciplined use-case first investing and backing exceptional founders in their niches to deliver strong, long-term returns for our LPs in this fast-changing world of AI,” Pentathlon Ventures’ managing partner Gireendra Kasmalkar said.

Founded in 2020, Pentathlon Ventures has backed 23 startups, including Deeptek, Rezolve, Spyne, Dista, TurboHire and ShopSe, among others, through its first fund. It had launched its first fund in 2021 with a corpus of ₹76 Cr.

Pentathlon’s core team includes Clarice Technologies founder Sandeep Chawda, Grassroots Business Fund former investment officer Saurabh Lahoti, Sapience Analytics founder Madhukar Bhatia, Mayya Consulting LLC founder Ashok Mayya, Sprih cofounder Hemant Joshi and Cubyts cofounder Shahshank Deshpande.

The development comes at a time when early stage startups operating in the B2B SaaS space are garnering more investor interest. In February, Equirus Group announced the final close of Equirus InnovateX Fund at ₹166 Cr to back up to 15 startups operating in sectors like SaaS, deeptech, fintech, among others. It would primarily focus its investments in the B2B space. 

Prior to that, Neon Fund announced the closure of its third fund at $25 Mn in December last year, with a primary focus on investing in B2B SaaS startups leveraging AI, with an average cheque size of $500K to $1 Mn.

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