 "Angel InvestorRehan Yar Khan launches Rs 300crore Orios Venture Partners")
Indian early stage investor, Rehan Yar Khan, today launched his first Venture Capital fund Orios Venture Partners with a Rs 300crore corpus to back technology entrepreneurs who are building the next generation of multi-billion dollar companies from India. Orios will invest in early stage companies from Seed to Series A and Series B with investments ranging from Rs 1 croreto Rs 20crore in key growth sectors like India internet and B2B software products for global markets.
?“From a personal standpoint, the idea is to scale up my endeavour of investing in my personal capacity as I had a great run-15 of 19 investments turned outto be good investments. I saw a massive void in the market from an entrepreneur’s point of view. There are not enough funds in the market and they want todeal with funds that have entrepreneurs on board.
[caption id=“attachment_93952” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Rehan Yar Khan. Pic Courtesy: Forbes India[/caption]
“Secondly, the Indian investor has missed out onparticipatinginthe technology boom that is taking place in the country. There are hardly any public stocksthathe can participate with and funds that are investing in these firms have been raised abroad,“Khan, the Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners, toldFirstbiz in a telephonic interview on the prime reasons for launching the fund.
The fund has been raised with funds from High-Net worth Individuals (HNIs), institutional investors and three founding members that include Mayur BPadia,Farooq Oomerbhoy and Khan himself. The fund will investequallyin software product companies and e-commerce.
Series B investment
The first investment will be announced in two-three months in a Mumbai-Pune based software product company**.** Khan did not disclose the name of the company, but shared that this will be a Series B investment. In the 18 month investing period, the fund will look at 8-12investments, Khan said.
Khan is a leading early stage investor with 20 years of experience, both as an experienced entrepreneur and six years as an investor, andmany successful global Indian software companies to his credit. Since 2008, he has invested in 19 companies, of which 15 companies from his portfolio have seen success and remarkable growth including Druva, OlaCabs, Jigsee (VuClip), Unbxd and PrettySecrets.
Khan has played a pivotal role in scaling companies by mentoring them to expand to developed markets with global operations and teams in Silicon Valley. Notableamongthem has been Druva, his first such investment, which is currently valued at over Rs 1000crore.
“The quality of software products coming out of India is very good even though we don’t have a lot of quantity. Only 0.1 percent of all our software exports is about products, the rest is services. Slowly, it’sturningtowards towards products and perhaps in the next 20 years, around 10-20 percent will be software products. Now we need more entrepreneurs to produce the next wave of software products,” Khan said as a reason for focusing on this segment.
Enthusiastic partners
“It is hard to find investment partners who share the same enthusiasm and belief in your brand. Orios will do exactly that and contribute far beyond capital. PrettySecrets would not be the brand it is today without their strategic advice and guidance"said Karan Behal, founder of PrettySecrets in a statement sent to the media.
Commenting on the launch,Khan said in a statement, “Orios Venture Partners extends my work since 2008 of backing these entrepreneurs not just with capital but more importantly with strategic and operational guidance to build rapidly growing business and emerge as market leaders in their domain. Today the Indian Internet is witnessing phenomenal growth which will see over half a billion people online by 2020 and over hundred million people shopping online providing a ready opportunity for dynamic entrepreneurs to cater to these growing needs.”
Orios Venture Partners comprises of an eminent advisory board of industry veterans who bring with them deep industry knowledge including Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Google India), Anupam Mittal (Founder and CEO of People Group which owns businesses such as Shaadi.com) Shujaat Khan (Blue River Capital) and Raj Chinai (Harvard Angels). Each board member is both an active investor and a prominent leader from the India Internet and Software arena, whose advice and guidance will bring tremendous value addition to the fund’s investing, business strategy and entrepreneur mentoring process.Backing Orios Venture Partners is a strong 10 member team, comprising of a seasoned investing team many of whom have worked with Rehan for close to a decade.
Khan is a founding member of Indian Angel Network’s (IAN) Mumbai Chapter, a past board member of IAN, a TiE Charter Member and a honorary member of Harvard Angels and led their initial investment in India.
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