Fireside Ventures’ brand start-ups cross $1-bn m-cap

Fireside Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by top investor Kanwaljit Singh, has closed its second fund — Fireside Fund II — at ~863 crore ($118 million). The pandemic has accelerated the business of Fireside’s portfolio of 22 consumer brand start-ups, which have crossed a total portfolio market capitalisation of $1 billion. A digital-first approach played a key role for it to reach out to consumers.

“We saw interesting pivotal points (during the pandemic) which benefited a lot of our brands. We saw consumer behaviour shifting more towards e-commerce and engagement through digital platforms, whether it was work or fitness and health care from home,” said Singh, founder and managing partner at Fireside Ventures, adding, “Technology, as a platform on which these brands are getting built, is becoming well established. While in 2020 there has been a lot of disruption in the world, overall, we saw some positive tailwinds across our portfolio. We want to create digital-first iconic brands from India.”

The Fireside Fund II has marquee investors such as Fund of Funds for Start-ups operated by Small Industries Development Bank of India under the aegis of the government’s initiative — Start-up India Action Plan — and Investment Corporation of Dubai. The other investors include Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF, Bajaj Holdings and Investment, ITC, L’oreal, Pidilite Group, Premjiinvest, and a large US university endowment.

Fireside will invest in 15-20 consumer brand start-ups, while continuing to keep its focus on digital-first brands. “We are equally proud of all the founders from our portfolio companies. It is remarkable to see their sheer guts and grit last year as they pivoted, planned, and programmed themselves to survive and be successful as well,” said Singh, adding, “We are now eager to go all out and partner young Indian entrepreneurs who are creating exciting new digital-first brands across the consumption spectrum and are consciously building brands that focus on consumers.”

Fireside Fund II has received investment interest from over 1,500 companies so far. It deeply evaluated over 300 of them before making the four investments.

The Fund II portfolio companies to date are Fablestreet, Sarva Yoga, Gynoveda, and Slurrp Farm.