The arm of Consumer Care & Lighting plans to do more from its , which has a corpus of Rs 250 crore, according to its top executive. The approach of Wipro Consumer Care – Ventures has been to invest $1-3 million per deal with a follow-on investment that can go up to $4 million. The second fund will look to build a of around 15-16 companies, largely with the same ticket sizes, with a little more focus on follow-on funding, said the ’s managing partner, Sumit Keshan.
“We will do more cases of follow-on (investments) in fund II. The need for capital for good and growing companies is still there. So, the options they have is to either look internally or externally.
Over a period through learning, we realised that probably we need to increase follow-on as that can be helpful for those companies, and can look at the return on the new money as well,” Keshan said. "And if the going is good, you don't want to keep funding that firm. I think that is the thesis that we want to go with,” he added.
Part of the billionaire businessman Azim Premji-led Wipro group, the corporate venture capital firm of Wipro Consumer Care & Lighting aims to start committing capital from the second fund after fully deploying the balance 25% from the Rs 200 crore first fund. Started in 2019, the VC firm’s first fund has made 11 investments, including in brands such as , , , , Ustraa and latest in The Baker's Dozen. It has so far invested around 20% towards follow-on deals with the balance towards tw.
