Lightspeed India closes $500M early-stage fund

Lightspeed India closes $500M early-stage fund
Lightspeed India closes $500M early-stage fund

Multi-stage VC firm Lightspeed India Partners has announced the closing of a $500M early-stage fund (LSIP Fund IV).

The fund, which wrote its first cheque in India in 2007, seeks to invest in India and Southeast Asia.

Alongside LSIP Fund IV, which is a dedicated early-stage fund vehicle, Lightspeed invests in growth-stage companies in the India and Southeast Asia region from its Select and Opportunity fund vehicles.

Over the past five years, the firm’s presence has expanded to 28 professionals across four locations (Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and Singapore).

Lightspeed has been a partner to a number of companies in India, including Indian Energy Exchange, Oyo, Byju’s, Grab, Acko, Razorpay, Udaan, Sharechat and Innovaccer.

The VC firm has also appointed Bejul Somaia to Lightspeed’s leadership team, where he will contribute to its strategy and global operations in addition to his existing roles advising on investments in India, Southeast Asia and Europe.

Somaia joined Lightspeed in 2008 and brings deep experience backing entrepreneurs and helping to build Lightspeed in India and Southeast Asia, where he’ll continue advising on investments and supporting the regions’ best and brightest Founders.

“In the early 2000s, Lightspeed started building a global footprint given our conviction that the future of technology and entrepreneurship would be global. Today, Lightspeed has 70 investors located across twelve cities globally,” said Somaia. “By intentionally constructing cross-border deal teams, we’re able to offer founders local market knowledge and relationships, together with deep sector domain knowledge. In doing so, we’re all exposed to, and are learning from, the innovation that is happening across the world in order to better serve our founders.”

Lightspeed is focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the enterprise, consumer, health, and fintech sectors. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 500 companies globally including Affirm, Carta, Cato Networks, Epic Games, Faire, Forty Seven, FTX, Guardant Health, Mulesoft, Netskope, Nutanix, Rubrik, Sharechat, Snap, TripActions, Udaan, and Ultima Genomics.

Lightspeed and its global team currently manage $18 billion across the Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in the US, China, Europe, India, Israel, and Southeast Asia. www.lsvp.com