LC Venture Debt Fund
about lc venture debt fund
The Fund seeks to empower early and growth stage companies in India and Southeast Asia, providing them capital to scale without significantly diluting equity. The Southeast Asia and India's venture debt market has the potential to scale up by 4 - 5x over the next few years. The Fund presents investors a unique opportunity to participate in Southeast Asia and India's venture debt story and fast growing segment.
Portfolio Companies
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Why this fund
Provide senior-secured loans, with an equity upside, to 35 - 40 companies in India and Southeast Asia at stages Series A and above with a ticket size of US$1 to US$5 million.
Managed by experienced credit professionals with combined experience of over 25 years in institutions such as IFC, GIC, Deutsche Bank and with investment and asset management experience of over US$1 billion in Asia.
Sector-agnostic mandate with focus on partnering with companies with strong business fundamentals and run by passionate founders.
The Venture Debt Opportunity
In older venture ecosystems such as US and Europe, Venture Debt has been in the range of 15-20% of total VC funding
- In mature venture markets such as USA, Venture Debt constituted 15-20% of total VC funding even in difficult years such as 2022.
- Venture debt has grown at an extremely rapid pace in Europe since its introduction in the late 1990s.
- In line with the US market, venture debt in Europe forms a considerable share as a % of VC financing and accounts for an average of 15% of the total VC funding.
Venture debt in India and Southeast Asia is a more recent phenomenon – it is highly underpenetrated and will grow at a rapid pace on back of rising share (as a percentage of VC funding) and higher VC inflows over the next 5 years.
- Venture debt entered relatively late in India, in the year 2015, and remains significantly underpenetrated, compared to US and Europe markets.
- 2020 was a breakout year for venture debt in India when the total venture debt funds in India raised jumped 2x to c.US$400m.
- The estimated venture debt market opportunity in India is US$3-4b based on current VC funding rate.
- Venture debt in SEA emerged in 2015 boosted by efforts of the Singapore Government locally.
- Data is scarce on venture debt activity in SEA but is expected to be in line with Indian market given the similarities in venture funding activity.
- For growing economies such as India and SEA, Venture Debt investments vary in the 3-6% range of total VC funding.
Team
Sanket Sinha
Portfolio Manager
Sanket has over 10 years of experience during which he co-founded a fintech venture, WealthPack (later acquired by Edelweiss), which was a personal finance application aggregating customer’s accounts in real time. Before that, he was a founding employee and Head of Portfolio and Credit at X10 Financial Services, a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) which provided supply chain financing to SMEs in India.
Ankit Agrawal
Portfolio Manager
Ankit has over 11 years of experience focused on investments across the capital stack (private equity, long term and structured debt). Prior to joining Lighthouse Canton, Ankit has led and managed equity and debt investments in his roles with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), GIC, and the Piramal Group. He has overseen portfolios and transactions of over US$500mn in various sectors including manufacturing, agribusiness, hospitality, logistics, real estate, healthcare and more.
Ashish Jain
Director, Venture Debt Investments
Ashish has over 17 years of experience in Private Equity, Venture Debt, Real Estate, Hospitality, Warehousing and Business Development. Before his current role at Lighthouse Canton, he was the Director of Investments at Stride Ventures. His impressive career path includes significant positions at Mirae Asset, IndusInd Bank, Yesbank, and JP Morgan Chase. Ashish is a qualified Chartered Accountant and LLB (General), and he has earned an Executive MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.
Neelaksh Arora
Assistant Vice President, Venture Debt Investments
Neelaksh has over 6 years of experience ininvestments and financial consulting. Prior to joining Lighthouse Canton, hehas executed new investments across healthcare delivery, pharmaceuticalsand life sciences and facilitated financial due diligence across diversesectors like hospitality, tourism, food and beverages while working withQuadria Capital and KPMG. In his last stint with CredAvenue (Yubi) hefacilitated corporate debt solutions for corporates and startups.
