Venture Catalysts launches Beams Fintech, India's first Growth Fintech Fund

Startup incubator Venture Catalysts has launched its second fund, Beams FinTech Fund (Beams) to focus on growth-stage investments in the financial services and technology space. 

With a target size of $100 million, Beams plans to invest $8 million-$10 million in growth stages, Series B and C rounds of fintech companies, and build a concentrated portfolio of a dozen fintech companies. The founding team is already in the advanced stages of its first close. 

Beams is Venture Catalysts’ second fund after 9Unicorns, a $100 million early-stage sector-agnostic accelerator fund. 

Beams is co-founded by fintech veterans Sagar Agarwal and Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Anuj Golecha, Anil Jain, and Gaurav Jain. Naveen Surya, Chairman of the Fintech Convergence Council and Founder of ItzCash (now EbixInc), has been roped in as the fintech expert partner (non-executive) as part of the core founding team. 

With a founder-first approach, Beams has a focused strategy of offering founders with capital and ecosystem support to build large successful fintech companies. It would provide a network of local and international banks, insurance companies, NBFCs, fintech brands, mentors, and advisors to not only access capital at affordable rates but also to expedite the go-to-market strategy of its portfolio companies in India and abroad. In addition, Beams would also provide access to VCATs 250+ portfolio companies and 195+ corporates for partnerships through Incubate Hub.

"Fintech is consuming an increasingly larger slice of the software pie. We are in fintech 3.0 right now in India, with the first wave of lending and payments companies having received a significant amount of capital and now the capital is moving across segments. Seasoned professionals and high-quality founders are moving out from larger firms to target newer categories to solve the long tail financial services demand in India," said Sagar Agarvwal, Co-founder and Partner, Beams.

While globally, there are several fintech-focused growth funds such as Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, and General Catalysts, there were none focused only on India.

"Fintech opportunity is huge in India as it is the only tech segment in India that has created over $75 billion in value and $8 billion in M&As. Our returns in BharatPe are a testament to the opportunity in the fintech space in India. We have given 90x return to investors from BharatPe exit which turned into a unicorn last year and are creating more unicorns in this space," said Anuj Golecha, Co-founder and Partner, Beams.

India is the third-largest fintech market globally after the US and China in terms of the number of startups, capital invested, and the number of unicorns. In 2021 alone, 18 Indian companies turned into unicorns in the fintech space.