Accel has raised $650 million for its eighth fund in India as the US venture firm expands its investment strategy in the South Asian market.
The new fund follows the firm’s seventh fund in India secured in March 2022. Accel – which has backed companies including e-commerce group Flipkart, food delivery platform Swiggy and software group Freshworks – has established itself as the most venture firm successful in India, serving as the first institutional investor in its portfolio companies.
The firm wrote the first institutional check to Flipkart at a post-money valuation of $4 million — an investment that has since grown in value, with Flipkart now worth more than $36 billion. Partner Anand Daniel led Swiggy’s seed round at a pre-money valuation of $2 million. Swiggy went public in November in what was the biggest global tech IPO of 2024, at a valuation of $11.3 billion.
By 2022, the firm’s top-performing startups had collectively surpassed $100 billion in valuation.
The Indian startup dynamic has changed a lot since Accel first entered over a decade ago. A key change has been the increase in the number of public listings, addressing earlier criticisms. More than half a dozen Accel-backed Indian companies, including manufacturing platform Zetwerk and jeweler Bluestone, are set to go public this year, TechCrunch previously reported.
“India is fast becoming a promising hub for technology IPOs driven by its strong capital markets and a thriving innovation ecosystem that continues to attract significant investor interest,” said Daniel (left in the photo above ) for TechCrunch in November.
Accel also remains one of the few Silicon Valley investors not to spin off its India unit, while rivals Sequoia and Matrix have cut ties with their respective India funds in recent years.
The firm has recently deepened its focus towards rural India, betting against conventional wisdom that businesses catering to affluent consumers in smaller cities and towns can achieve sustainable success.
