Incubate Fund Asia's $50 million fund boosts support for Indian startups

Japan's venture capital firm, Incubate Fund Asia, has recently announced the initial closing of its third fund, which boasts an ambitious target corpus of $50 million.

Notably, Incubate Fund's India-focused arm has undergone a strategic rebranding and is now known as Incubate Fund Asia. This transformation aims to amplify their commitment to nurturing pre-seed and seed-stage startups not only in India but also in the vibrant entrepreneurial landscape of South East Asia.

The funds raised will be directed towards making early-stage investments and providing follow-on funding to startups exhibiting robust and promising growth trajectories.

In a conversation with CNBC-TV18, Nao Murakami, the founder of Incubate Fund Asia, expressed enthusiasm about their investment strategy for the new fund.

He stated, “We have committed to two investments from these new funds, and then both are still in the B2B supply chain space. So we are still very much bullish about the supply chain play in India. So we keep investing in this segment. But from these new funds, we are going to focus on two businesses as our focus sectors, one is the analysing Indian middle class, especially in tier-two, and tier-three cities.

So any business, service, technology, that is targeting tier-two, or tier-three consumers will be a good target for us. Then the other one is the SMB enablers. Obviously, SMBs are the backbone of the Indian growth but there are a lot of inefficiencies and we should solve that issue. So SMB enabler will be another good target for us as well."

Meanwhile, on a different note, the 2023 FIRST Global Challenge is set to bring together a multitude of talented teenagers from across the world for a thrilling robotics competition in Singapore, scheduled to commence on October 7th.

Five students from Goa are representing India. CNBC-TV18's Akhil Vishwanath had the opportunity to catch up with these young innovators as they subjected their robots to final trials before embarking on their exciting journey.