Venture investing in tech companies may have been way down in the first quarter of this year, but not to worry, all you fitful startups: venture firms were taking a break so they could focus on raising absolutely gigantic funds to invest this year.
New Enterprise Associates, a global venture capital firm with offices in Menlo Park, announced Wednesday it has raised $3.2 billion to invest in tech companies. The new funds include a $2.8 billion core fund, the firm s 15th since its founding nearly four decades ago, and $350 million for what the firm calls an Opportunity Fund, or a separate pocket of capital intended to funnel more money into select, later-stage investments.
As a growing number of companies are scaling faster but staying private longer, large venture growth rounds are increasingly prevalent, said NEA managing general partner Scott Sandell.
The new fund marks NEA s fourth-consecutive $2.5-billion-plus venture fund, and is the largest reported fund raised this year. Until now, Bessemer Ventures had raised the biggest fund reported at $1.6 billion.
The scale of NEA s new fund signals the firm is taking a different direction in investing than other VC outlets. Several firms are raising smaller funds, hoping to make more targeted investments in early-stage companies. Menlo Ventures, for instance, announced today a $400 million fund with a $15 million allocation for seed-stage investments — a far cry from the $1.5 billion funds the firm used to raise.
But with hedge funds and big banks getting involved in late-stage tech investments, VC firms will need bigger funds if they want to participate in the later funding rounds. Think Uber s two $1.2 billion funding rounds last year.
In other venture news, Sequoia Capital seems particularly keen on India these days. On-demand grocery delivery startup PepperTap, based in the Indian city of Gurgaon, announced Tuesday it had raised a $10 million Series A with help from Sequoia. It was the second PepperTap investment for Sequoia, which also gave the startup a $1.2 million seed round.
Also on Tuesday, Indian delivery startup Grofers announced it had raised a $35 million Series B from Sequoia Capital. Grofers, also based in Gurgaon, provides on-demand delivery in less than 90 minutes of products from local brick-and-mortar merchants.
According to CrunchBase, Sequoia has invested in 21 India-based companies this year — a big pickup over the 14 India deals it closed in all of 2014.
