Singapore VC Panthera Growth raises first half of $250m second fund

Panthera Growth Partners (PGP), a Singapore-based tech investment firm, announced it has successfully secured over 50% of its second fund’s US$250 million target. The firm expects to complete the rest of the amount by the end of this year.

The second fund, called Fund II, will offer up to 100% of its commitments to co-investment opportunities.

Panthera Growth Partners founder and general partner Shilpa Kulkarni / Photo credit: Panthera

The new investment vehicle follows PGP’s Fund I, which was established last year and had a corpus of US$84 million. The first fund was deployed to back diverse startups such as AI platform Antuit, online grocery supermarket BigBasket, furniture marketplace Pepperfry, and women lingerie retailer Zivame, among others.

With Fund II, PGP plans to invest in growth-stage startups that have achieved product-market fit across India and Southeast Asia. Investments will be disbursed to about a dozen portfolio companies with an average check size of US$20 million each.

Founded in 2021 by Shilpa Kulkarni, PGP is an investment firm that exclusively targets revenue-generating and scalable tech startups. The firm has partnerships with institutional investors from India, the EU, and the US.

“With our teams’ experience of investing and operating companies in the startup ecosystem for more than two decades, we look to support entrepreneurs and management teams as they embark on an ambitious growth journey,” Kulkarni said in a statement.

See also: Capital SEA: Southeast Asia’s funding landscape

The announcement comes amid a grim “funding winter” that has led to a decline in valuation, as well as layoffs across the startup ecosystem. In May, overall startup funding raised in India fell to its lowest this year, with growth-stage startup investment incurring a month-on-month drop of 62%.