“Given the pace of technology evolution, we expect AI to be a fertile ground for investments over the rest of this decade,” said Alok Goyal, partner at StellarisVenture Partners.“We are also bullish on credit expansion opportunities in India, enabled by a public digital infrastructure that is second to none globally. Another exciting area is the need for sustainability/climate-oriented products and services, which we believe will offer a global opportunity in the coming decades.”
Primarily, a tech-focused fund, in its relatively short journey, Stellaris has partnered with around 40 businesses across sectors. “While 75% of our investments are in sectors where we have a well-defined investment thesis, we are not afraid to take opportunistic bets with outstanding founders. Our past investments have spanned SaaS, fintech, brands, consumer tech, health tech, and others,” said Goyal.
Stellaris started its first fund of $90 million in early 2017 and is currently investing from its second fund of $225M that was raised in 2021.
When asked about the fund’s most successful performing portfolio brands, Goyal said, in Stellaris’ first fund, Mamaearth stands out as a consumer brand in India, achieving growth at a breakneck pace. Whatfix has become a well-known SaaS company out of India, establishing itself as a global category leader in the digital adoption space, with 15% of the Fortune 500 as their customers. Propelld has emerged as the leader in the education lending space and has been operationally profitable. Even in our second fund, where companies are relatively young, we already have promising category leaders such as TurnO in commercial EV distribution and lending, Beepkart in the used 2W retail, and Rigi in community management and monetization for influencers.”
This year, Stellaris believes that SaaS is in the middle of its largest disruption since the cloud, fueled by the power of AI. Similarly, the firm is weighing the impact of tech evolutions such as Gen AI and Chat GPT.
“This will vary by sector,” said Goyal. “On one hand, across sectors, the advent of genAI will introduce newer, 10x capabilities, compelling companies to rethink their value propositions. This will undoubtedly offer numerous new opportunities. At the same time, search as an acquisition channel will change substantially – the paradigm of SEO and SEM will change significantly in a genAI-enabled search paradigm.”