Accel has raised $650 million for its eighth India fund as the U.S. venture firm expands its investment strategy in the South Asian market.
The new fund follows the firm’s seventh India fund 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 India’s most successful venture firm, serving as the first institutional investor in its portfolio companies.
The firm wrote the first institutional cheque for Flipkart at a $4 million post-money valuation — an investment that has since surged in value, with Flipkart now worth more than $36 billion. Partner Anand Daniel led Swiggy’s seed round at a $2m pre-money valuation. Swiggy went public in November in what was the largest global technology IPO of 2024, at a valuation of $11.3 billion.
By 2022, the firm’s top-performing startups had collectively exceeded $100 billion in valuation.
The Indian startup dynamics has changed a lot since Accel first entered more than a decade ago. A key shift has been the increasing number of public listings, addressing previous criticisms. More than half a dozen Accel-backed Indian companies, including manufacturing platform Zetwerk and jeweller Bluestone, are set to go public this year, TechCrunch previously reported.
“India is fast becoming a promising hub for tech IPOs driven by its strong capital markets and a thriving innovation ecosystem that continues to attract substantial investor interest,” Daniel (left in the above picture) told TechCrunch in November.
Accel also remains one of the few Silicon Valley investors that hasn’t separated its Indian 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 serving affluent consumers in smaller cities and towns can achieve sustainable success.
Accel rethinks early-stage startup investing in India