Antler, an early stage Indian VC firm IndiaA unit of Singapore-based venture capital platform Antler has raised 25-30 . committed to investing in startup In the Blockchain and Web 3.0 space in the next 2-3 years. It plans to deploy $100 million – $150 million in over 100 Indian startups over the next 3 years, of which up to $50 million is committed to the Web 3.0 space.
Nitin Sharma, partner and global blockchain lead at Antler, told ET that the fund will invest at least $250,000 and the pre-product market will come at a fit stage.
Sharma is also the founder of another VC, Encrypt Blockchain, as part of which he has invested in Mudrex, a social trading and decentralized finance (DFI) aggregator, Onjuno, a payroll infrastructure bridging banking and crypto.
In an unprecedented year for the Web 3.0 space in India, Sequoia India has made nearly 20 investments in Web 3.0 startups, including BetaFinance, Clearpool, CoinShift and FaZe, through a combination of equity and token investments.
This marks a significant jump for the marquee VC fund, which has so far invested in two such startups earlier this year.
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Sequoia India Managing Director Shailesh Lakhani said the fund will primarily focus on consumer applications that come at a large scale.
“We are most excited about the fact that the blockchain infrastructure has finally reached the point where it can support volume applications at low transaction costs,” Lakhani told ET.
“Blockchain has had amazing theoretical impact to date, but in practice it was not really easy to use, nor was it cost-effective at scale. This is starting to change in 2021 and we hope to pick up on this trend Speed will come,” he said.
Blockchain technology includes categories such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organizations, on-ramp, and infrastructure.
Antler’s announcement and Sequoia India’s rally comes despite regulatory uncertainty in India as the cryptocurrency bill is expected to be introduced in the ongoing winter session of Parliament.
Additionally, the space has been largely dominated by international funds such as Jump Capital, Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures, who are looking for early winners in the Indian ecosystem.
International funds have invested over $500 million in Indian startups and the blockchain ecosystem this year.
“I still think there is a regulatory risk,” Sharma said. “…we’re not officially making a commitment because we think the rules are necessarily going to be 100% positive, but we think the point is, there’s a long-term story here.”
“We will certainly find people in India building for the world and among those things whether in equities or digital assets. We will have ways to invest,” he said.
Sharma said the fund will give founders the ability to leverage the global community of Web 3.0 founders as well as the developer ecosystem through the fund’s partnership with Solana and Polygon, as well as QuestBook.
Crypto Native vs Consumer Tech VC
While some Indian VCs have been studying this space and honing their technical knowledge over the years, they are competing with more experienced funds and their competition may be cut short.
“Crypto is very different, it’s not the traditional kind of game where you go to entrepreneurs and help them with sales and marketing,” said Saurabh Sharma of Jump Capital, an early investor in crypto exchange CoinDCX. “In my view, only specific types of VCs really have value addition here, because capital is almost a commodity in space.”
Sharma said that “the ability to help with the actual technical development of projects, your understanding of the structure of the product or whether you are active in market making or liquidity provision or all those crypto fundamentals validates…”
This is also the first year in which Elevation Capital – which has backed startups such as Paytm, Meesho and Swiggy – has added Web 3.0 to its investment portfolio and set up a specialized team to invest in such startups.
“Many of us have been involved with Web 3.0 companies for 5+ years. We’ve seen companies move into Web 2.0 in a big way. And a lot of the lessons really don’t differ when it comes to how organizations scale or market.” How do I know,” Lakhani said.
“We don’t expect Web 3.0 to be a complete refresh. In fact, we’re also helping many of our Web 2.0 companies adopt Web 3.0 concepts and our knowledge and experience in both is a huge plus.”
Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal’s early-stage fund Titan Capital have invested in DoS, a blockchain gaming platform, and is also hiring to build their crypto investment practice.