Lightspeed has raised $500 million for its newest India and Southeast Asia fund, its largest for the regions, as it looks to make deeper investments in the South Asian market.
The firm didn't want to raise additional capital because the fourth fund was hard-capped at $500 million.
According to the Tuesday announcement, Lightspeed was aiming to raise $500 million for the India and Southeast Asia fund.
Lightspeed said Tuesday that it has raised over $7 billion across several funds.
Lightspeed began investing in India over 10 years ago and has amassed an impressive portfolio of several fast-growing startups including Byju's, Udaan, Sharechat, and Razorpay.
It began investing in the Southeast Asian market in the past decade and has backed several companies, including Ula, which was backed by Jeff Bezos.
Lightspeed, which has a team of nine partners in India and Southeast Asia, is nearly doubling the size of its fund because it is seeing more opportunities in the region.
When India internet 1.0 started, there were marketplaces of digital goods such as MakeMyTrip and BookMyShow. There is a lot of depth within the internet economy of India.
The quality of entrepreneurs who are launching their ventures is an interesting factor. He said that they believe they have the chance to play a lot wider.
Lightspeed hit the brakes after the outbreak of the Pandemic. Lightspeed didn't participate in the funding cycle of last year.
Hemant Mohapatra is a partner at Lightspeed. We don't want to be on the list of funds that do the most deals.
The weekend deals last year were very high valuations. The deals didn't meet our bar and we ended up passing on them. The deployment pace was slower than the market.
Lightspeed has remained consistent with its approach and speed of deal activities and is still investing at the same pace as last year.
There is an area of deliberate choice for us. Over the last few years, we have had discussions about whether we should change our strategy around the pace of investments and the kind of companies we are supporting. In retrospect, I think we have been level-headed.
We will invest in all of the companies if we are excited about them. If we don't like any of them, we won't invest.
Lightspeed will continue to focus on areas such as consumer internet, software as a service, and edtech, the two partners said, adding that the firm is also evaluating newer opportunities such as climate-tech, cross-border payments and web3. Nine web3 startups have been invested by Lightspeed India.
Lightspeed India works closely with other arms of the firm and whenever needed the global fund delivers the big checks as we have seen in the case of Udaan and Razorpay.
Scores of high-profile investors have invested in the nation over the past 12 years. The South Asian market has been invested in by both Sequoia and Accel for over a decade.
In the last few years, SoftBank, Alpha Wave Global and Tiger Global have increased their investments in India. SoftBank invested billions of dollars in India last year. Tiger Global has invested billions of dollars in the country.
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