Accel, one of the world’s most influential venture capitalist firms, is getting more bullish on India.

The Silicon Valley-headquartered firm, which largely focuses on early-stage investments, said today it has closed $550 million for its sixth venture fund in India.

This is a significant amount of capital for Accel’s efforts in the country, where it began investing 15 years ago and has infused roughly $1 billion through all its previous funds.

Anand Daniel, a partner for Accel in India, told TechCrunch in an interview that the VC fund will continue to focus on identifying and investing in seed and early-stage startups.

But the fund realized it needed more money so it could actively participate in follow-on rounds (later-stage financing rounds) of its portfolio startups. The announcement today follows Accel’s similar recent push in Europe and Israel, where it closed a $575 million fund.

“We also selectively do growth investments for companies that are scaling well, such as Swiggy, UrbanClap, Blackbuck and Bounce. We have continued to back them through Series B and Series C rounds,” he said.

Like in many other markets, Accel’s track record in India is quite impressive. It participated in the seed financing round of e-commerce firm Flipkart, which was then valued at $4 million post-money. Walmart bought a majority stake in Flipkart last year for $16 billion. (This helped Accel net more than $1 billion in return from Flipkart.)

Accel, which has nine partners and more than 50 members in total in India, also invested in the seed round of SaaS giant Freshworks, which is now valued at more than $3 billion, food delivery startup Swiggy, also valued at north of $3 billion, and recently turned unicorn Blackbuck. Accel has been the first institutional investor for 85% of startups in its portfolio.

The VC firm says 44 of the 100-odd startups in its India portfolio today are valued at over $100 million each. In total, including Flipkart’s $21 billion market value, Accel’s portfolio firms have created $44 billion in market value.

Some of the investments Accel has made in India

“When we started our first fund in India in 2005, the world was a very different place. Just 1 in 50 Indians had access to the internet and mobile phone ownership was nascent. ​Yet we firmly believed that India was on the cusp of a big change,” the firm said in a statement.

“Today, the opportunity ahead is significantly bigger than when we started in 2005: India can now digitally identify 1.3 billion people, has 600 million internet users and 150 million online transacting customers with a national payments platform that processes $20 billion a month.”

Daniel said moving forward Accel will continue to focus on consumer, business-to-business, fintech, healthcare and global SaaS categories. “We have nine partners with their own areas of interest. They invest from their own conviction and finance seed rounds. If we see a particular sector evolving, then we do a deeper thesis work,” he said.

“We then develop deeper confidence for the space. For example, back in the day we invested in mobility startup TaxiForSure, long before Uber had arrived in India. That helped us understand mobility well. We have used those learnings to invest in several more mobility startups.”

Accel’s growing interest in India comes at a time when several other giants, including SoftBank and Prosus Ventures, have also become more active in the nation — though they tend to finance later-stage rounds.

For Indian startups that are already having their best year, this can only be good news.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Accel closes new 0M fund for India

The holiday season is officially on, and Disrupt Berlin 2019 opens  its doors in just nine days. We’re ready to celebrate both occasions in festive style with a one-day Cyber Monday special. Buy a pass to Disrupt Berlin* today, 2 December, and you can pick any gift — up to $200 in value — from the TechCrunch Gift Guide.

Not familiar with our gift guide? You’re in for a treat. TechCrunch folk verge on the maniacal when it comes to choosing the gadgets, gear and services we use. Since we love to share, we curate the guide and pack it with absolutely awesome stuff.

Once you purchase your pass* to Disrupt Berlin today, we’ll contact you the week after the conference ends to get your preferred selection from the gift guide priced up to $200 (US). Cross a name off your holiday shopping list and choose a gift for a loved one, a friend or your kids. And if you decide to pick a cool gadget for yourself — hey, who are we to judge?

If you want to talk about gifts that keep on giving, Disrupt Berlin tops the list. This international conference boasts thousands of attendees from more than 50 countries, 200 media outlets and hundreds of early-stage startups exhibiting the very latest innovations across the tech spectrum. It’s opportunity on steroids.

We packed the Disrupt Berlin agenda with world-class speakers, presentations, in-depth Q&A Sessions, panel discussions and workshops. The cream of the international early-stage startup crop will compete in the Startup Battlefield pitch competition for a $50,000 equity-free prize and bask in the spotlight of investor and media attention.

You’ll find infinite networking opportunities in Startup Alley. Our expo floor will be home to hundreds of pre-Series A startups eager to connect and impress. While you’re in the Alley, be sure to meet our Disrupt Berlin 2019 TC Top Picks — a cadre of innovative startups handpicked by TechCrunch editors.

This year, the TC Hackathon finalists will pitch the products they built in less than 24 hours live on the Extra Crunch stage. If you’re looking for creative devs in your startup — or if you just appreciate code poetry — this is a great opportunity to see the solutions these highly skilled competitors created to address real-world problems.

And CrunchMatch, our free business match-matching service available to all attendees — makes networking easier, more productive and less stressful. Who doesn’t love that?

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December. Tis’ the season — take advantage of our one-day Cyber Monday celebration. Buy a pass to Disrupt Berlin 2019 today*, and you get to choose a gift — worth up to $200 — from the TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide. Come and join us in Berlin!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

*Purchase must occur before 11:59pm CET on 2 December and must be a full-priced pass without any additional discounts applied. You will be contacted via the email address you submit in your registration after the event has been completed to provide your preferred gift selection valued up to $200 USD.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Cyber Monday Disrupt Berlin special: Get a 0 gift with purchase

Uncapped, a London headquartered and Warsaw-based startup that wants to provide “revenue-based” finance to growing European businesses, is officially launching today and disclosing that it has raised £10 million in funding.

The capital is a mixture of equity funding and debt (money it can use for lending), and sees the fintech company backed by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, White Star Capital, and Seedcamp.

I understand a number of angel investors also participated. They include Robert Dighero (Partner at Passion Capital), Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (COO of GoCardless) and David Nolan and Kevin Glynn (founders of Butternut Box).

Founded by “serial entrepreneur” Asher Ismail (who was most recently CEO of Midrive), and former VC Piotr Pisarz, Uncapped has set out to use various marketing, sales and accounting data to be able to offer finance for young businesses based on their current (and projected) revenue.

Specifically, Uncapped says it will enable founders to access working capital between £10,000 and £1 million for a flat fee of 6%. It’s being pitched as a smart alternative for growing companies that don’t want to give away equity in return for capital to help grow.

“The first decision that entrepreneurs need to make when raising finance is whether to give away a portion of equity in their company, or take on debt,” explains Ismail. “Equity is a slow and very expensive way to fund growth, while loans add more risk. We’re creating an alternative that sits between debt and equity financing, while offering the benefits of both. We started Uncapped so that entrepreneurs wouldn’t have to give up a piece of their company or put up their house”.

Ismail says that Uncapped provides entrepreneurs with access to capital without the need for “personal guarantees, credit checks, warrants, or equity,” and promises to move a lot quicker than investors, or for that matter, more traditional forms of debt finance, can.

“We don’t require customers to share any business plans, cap tables, or pitch decks,” he adds. “All we need is to verify their business performance. We connect to the business’ existing sales and marketing platforms, like Stripe, Shopify and Facebook. Revenue-based finance also gives founders the flexibility to repay less when their sales slow or the market hits a downturn”.

The only stipulation is that businesses must be based on online payments and have at least nine months trading history. This makes Uncapped particularly suitable for companies operating e-commerce, SaaS, direct-to-consumer, gaming and app development businesses.

“For example, our first customer was online menswear brand, L’Estrange,” Uncapped Pisarz tells me. “For e-commerce businesses, December is typically the most challenging time to invest in growth, as inventory and marketing costs are at a peak but Christmas sales have not yet come through. We were able to provide the business with an advance within three days”.

Meanwhile, Ismail claims that Uncapped is the first company of its kind to launch in Europe (which is somewhat of a stretch) and that venture capital — although very different — is probably the closest alternative form of financing.

“Despite the $35 billion invested in Europe by VCs this year, many companies do not fit the venture model,” he says. “They might be a family business that doesn’t intend to sell, an entrepreneur focused on more of a niche market, or minority who may be overlooked by traditional funders. Whilst VCs will often meet 1,500 companies and back just five of them a year, we have the ability to provide 100s of businesses with growth capital for a flat fee much faster and without sacrificing equity at an early stage”.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Uncapped raises £10M to offer ‘revenue-based’ finance to growing businesses