US VC QED investors set to deploy $300 million in India, APAC
US-based venture capital firm
QED Investors
is looking to deploy between $250 million to $300 million in early and growth-stage startups in India and Asia Pacific.
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'While we do not have separate allocation for each geography, India will of course attract the major share of the investment planned for Asia,'
Sandeep Patil
, partner and head of Asia at QED Investors, told ET.
Armed with a $925-million fund it raised in 2023, the fintech-focused venture firm plans to invest in Indonesia, Singapore, Japan and all across Asia Pacific.
The strategy would be to invest in
growth-stage companies
and follow-up rounds beyond early-stage investments in Asia, Patil said.
'We have a growth fund and an early-stage fund,' he said. 'For the first cheque, we can deploy anywhere between $3 million to $20 million, and for growth stage companies, we can deploy between $20 million to $50 million.'
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In the last five years, QED Investors has invested around $220 million across Asia. It has taken early bets in Indian startups like neo-banking platform Jupiter, credit card sourcing platform OneCard, Upswing, which enables consumer facing startups to offer financial services, and Efficient Capital Labs, which offers financing solutions to Saas (Software-as-a-service) companies.
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QED Investors was founded in 2007 by Nigel Morris, who is also a cofounder of American banking corporation Capital One. Among Morris' famous early-stage venture bets are US-based personal finance startup Credit Karma, remittance startup Remitly, and Brazilian neo-bank NuBank. He is also an investor in Swedish fintech major Klarna.
In December,
QED Investors led a $25-million funding
round in OneCard.
While the fund has not undertaken any major stake sale in any of its Indian bets, Patil said booming public markets, with active retail institutional investor participation, and several successful startup IPOs over the last couple of years have given global investors much confidence to invest in India.
Within the broader fintech theme, Patil is looking out for embedded finance players and those who are using
artificial intelligence in finance
. 'By embedded finance, I mean even consumer-facing applications who can use unique data sets to underwrite customers better or have some unique opportunities to tie in financial services into their products,' he said.
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