IDG Ventures India, one of the formidable players in the early stage investment, has tweaked its brand name. The venture capital firm will be now known by a native Indian name ‘Chiratae Ventures.’ The rebranding is part of company’s strategy to move away from global ecosystem and sharpen its focus on Indian startups.
Chiratae is a Kanada word denoting the popular carnivorous animal Leopard, an animal that has almost become extinct in India.
The new name was unrelieved at a special event on Tuesday by IDG’s founding partners Sudhir Sethi and TCM Sundaram. The event was also attended by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalkrishnan.
Speaking at the event, Sethi said “We as Investors need to reinvent for the new India. We recognize that India is changing rapidly and at scale and we want to be the catalysts to support this entrepreneurship growth and change.”
Sethi added that the word Chiratae (Leopard) symbolizes our aspiration to become more agile in seizing right opportunities and also scaling our investment rapidly to make faster exits.
Founded in 2006 with small corpus of $150 Mn, over the last one decade IDG Ventures has invested in nearly 76 startups. Some these startups like Myntra, FirstCry, Lenskart and Curefit have today well-known brands and boasts higher market valuations.
The company’s advisory board consists of big names like Ratan Tata, Gopalakrishnan and Bruno Raschle. It competes with other well-known VC firms like Accel Partners and Saif Partners.
According to reports, IDG will be soon launching its fourth fund, which will be bigger than the previous three funds raised by the company.