Fireside Ventures announces closing of Fund II, investment in Gynoveda

Fund II of Fireside is anchored by Indian and global investors and institutions.

Business Standard : Fireside Ventures, an early-stage investor focused exclusively on consumer brands, has announced the first close of its second fund, which has a target of investing $100 million. The total commitments have crossed $60 million to date. Fireside Fund II is anchored by Indian and global investors and institutions.

The venture capital firm said the participation of global partners and the recent investment by French personal care company L'Oréal was a validation of their confidence in new-age consumer brands and the strong performance of the fund and its portfolio companies.

“We have witnessed a lot of interest from domestic and global investors, including family offices, strategics and large institutions, in investing in Fireside Fund II,” said Kanwaljit Singh, managing partner, Fireside Ventures. “The second fund aims to double down on the success of the first and follow the same strategy of investing in exciting young millennial brands and helping them with strong ecosystem support. We are also starting to see credible opportunities for Indian brands to go global.”

Fireside also announced its first Fund II investment — in Gynoveda, a personal care brand built around the core objective of bringing Ayurveda specifically in the area of menstrual health. The company has built the world’s first ‘period bot’ which helps diagnose specific menstrual issues and then prescribes a personalised regime of Ayurvedic supplements to help alleviate the issue.

“We are expanding and developing the portfolio across consumer wallets and we believe brands in superfoods, personalised beauty, fashion and personal care will be the new frontrunners in the consumer segment,” said Singh.

Fireside achieved the final closing of its first fund in February 2018 with a corpus of $50 million. The firm said it had received investment interest from over 2,000 companies and deeply evaluated over 400 of them before making the 18 investments. About 90 per cent of the investible corpus of Fund I has been deployed and the remaining 10 per cent is reserved for follow-ons. The fund has invested in diverse companies catering to the consumer segment, including boAt audio, Mama Earth, Vahdam Teas, Design Café, Alpha Vector (Frog Bikes) and Yoga Bar. In terms of exits, one of Fireside’s early investments, Kwik 24, was acquired by online grocery firm BigBasket in 2018.