Silicon Valley VC firm Social+Capital Partnership lines up over $1B for India by 2025

Monday, August 10, 2015

Four-year-old Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Social+Capital Partnership plans to invest over $1 billion in Indian companies in sectors such as financial services, energy, infrastructure and agriculture, its founder Chamath Palihapitiya said at a press meet in Bangalore.

Sri Lanka-born 38-year-old Palihapitiya, who served as vice president of Facebook and was responsible for user growth from 2007 to 2011, had overseen a steep rise in the social network’s user base from a few millions to close to a billion when he quit the firm.

Given his former position in Facebook, he can be easily counted as one of the several multi-millionaires created following the Facebook IPO three years ago.

“Over the next 10 years, we (would) really like to get $1 billion invested in India. If we see some early traction, you will see that number rapidly going up,” he said.

Social+Capital Partnership had started engaging with the Indian startup ecosystem through its investment in the maiden fund of Bangalore-based early investor Prime Venture Partners (which was previously AngelPrime) in 2011.

“We partnered with the AngelPrime more as a test so that we can learn the Indian ecosystem,” Palihapitiya said.

Source: VC Circle (link opens in a new window)

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