Celesta Capital has doubled its investments in India over the last 10 years, says Co-Founder

The rise of promising startups and technology companies in India has offered a lucrative opportunity for the world's top venture capital firms.

The Prime Minister's repeated assurances of promoting startups is also giving confidence and hope to the global investment community to place their bets on Indian companies. One such firm is Celesta Capital.

Based in the United States, Celesta is a multi-stage deep tech venture capital firm having 95 companies in its portfolio with 11 of them valued at over $1 billion and four companies valued at over $500 million. The firm has four funds totaling over $1 billion.

Its India portfolio include Arzooo, Clairvolex, Connect & Heal, Healofy, Ideaforge, Questt, Pixis, Rizzle, and more. The company recently invested $4.6 million in Indian medical diagnostics platform 5C Network's.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Nicholas Brathwaite, Co-founder at Celesta Capital said the company has doubled its investments in India over the last 10 years.

“Our cheque sizes have not changed significantly. We probably have increased the initial cheque size that we do in India slightly but not significantly. However our total investment that we are making in companies in India that has increased. Seven years ago, the size of the investments that we were making were probably about half of the total amount we are investing in companies today,” Brathwaite said.

Arun Kumar, Managing Partner at Celesta Capital, said all Indian companies that they have invested in can benefit from their guidance and become global.

“What excites us is the opportunity for deep technology – and that means hardware, software, semiconductors and systems where complicated technology is involved. So with the talent that exists in India, we do not see India as a cost arbitrage play, we see it as a very strong talent play. So all the companies that we invested in can benefit from our very seasoned guidance. So we see an opportunity for applying operating experience to build and scale world class companies from India," he said.