By Abhay Ray 
Introduction to Eximius Ventures
Founded in 2020, Eximius Ventures is a micro venture capital fund. Eximius Ventures is a pre-seed stage fund based in Delhi NCR and Bangalore. It invests up to $500k in the pre-product / early traction stage and takes a thesis-driven approach investing across FinTech, Healthtech, Media/Entertainment, and Gaming. It strives to support exceptional operators in building groundbreaking solutions for India. It has also reserved a significant portion of our fund for follow-on rounds.
Eximius understands the importance of agility in the fast-paced startup ecosystem, and have built an efficient and transparent decision-making process to provide founders with capital without unnecessary delays. In addition to capital infusion, it offers comprehensive support to its portfolio companies, which includes assistance in follow-on fundraising, strategic hiring, access to a global network, and fostering strategic partnerships. Portfolio includes remarkable startups such as Jar, Eka.care, Stan, and Skydo, which have not only attracted follow-on investments from renowned firms like Tiger Global, Hummingbird, General Catalyst, and Elevation but have also achieved notable success in their respective industries.
Founder Details
Ms. Pearl Agarwal is the Founder and serves as Managing Director at Eximius Ventures. She serves as Angel Investor at Pearl Agarwal. Prior to Eximius, Pearl spent a decade across various investment roles in the US and UK, helping companies raise capital, facilitating multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions, and ensuring business development. Alongside Eximius, Pearl is also the co-founder of DotReview, a platform for founders to get authentic and trusted reviews of investors.
Overview of Fund II
Eximius Ventures, a pre-seed focused venture capital firm (VC), has announced the launch of its second fund, targeting a corpus of $30 million. Fund II plans to take dedicated bets in 25-30 companies across fintech, artificial intelligence (AI)/software-as-a-service (SaaS), frontier tech, and consumer tech. Eximius Ventures has kept the initial ticker size per investment worth $500K while reserving “half of the corpus for follow-on investments, to further support its high-potential portfolio companies,” the VC firm said in its statement.
Investments and Strategy
Fund II has already invested in four companies across consumer tech and AI/Saas. These investments have either been led or co-led by Eximius Ventures alongside other marquee institutional investors, reflecting the firm’s strategic approach to identifying and leading the next wave of disruptors. This continues to build on Eximius’ philosophy of focused pre-seed investments as opposed to cohort-driven or spray-pray approach.
The VC firm aims to bridge the funding gap for early-stage founders, particularly in India’s competitive innovation ecosystem, by providing their first institutional capital.
Focus on Pre-Seed Startups
Pearl Agarwal, Founder and Managing Partner at Eximius Ventures, said in a statement, “At a time when funding is becoming increasingly selective, Eximius is doubling down on pre-seed startups, with an aim to drive momentum in India’s innovation ecosystem. We reject the ‘spray and pray’ mentality, especially at the earliest stages, and instead focus on backing bold, thesis-driven ideas with contrarian view points. Our goal is to bridge the gap for founders seeking their first institutional capital. The VC firm aims to bridge the gap for founders seeking their first institutional capital while enabling them to thrive in a competitive global market. With this new fund, it plans to accelerate growth and forge long-term partnerships with visionary founders.
Capital and Limited Partners
The new fund will draw capital from a diverse mix of limited partners (LPs), including high-net-worth individuals (HNIs), founder-investors, family offices, and corporate venture companies (CVCs), with a particular emphasis on global Japanese corporate investors.
Performance of Fund I
Eximius Ventures’ first fund has backed 23 startups, around 60 per cent of which have secured multiple up-rounds from global investors, delivering an IRR (internal rate of return) of over 40 per cent.The new fund aims to double down on the success of Fund I using a similar strategy.
Notable Investments
Eximius’ made nine investments in 2024 compared to four in 2023, nine in 2022 and five in 2021, as per data from Tracxn. It has made 22 seed-stage investments and two at Series A stage. Some of the notable investments from Eximius Ventures’ portfolio include Jar, Finarkein, Vegapay (a plug-and-play credit card platform), and Stan (a gamified engagement platform). These companies represent the firm’s commitment to identifying high-potential startups in emerging and disruptive sectors.
Conclusion
Led by Pearl Agarwal and Preeti Sampat, with a global investment experience of over 25 years combined, Eximius Ventures boasts a diversified team of eight members, each dedicated to a focus sector. This approach helps develop deep insights to identify the most promising founders and ideas, offering them early-stage support to scale and succeed. In addition to this, the investment committee also consists of sector experts with 40+ years of operating and financial experience. With the launch of Fund II, Eximius Ventures is set to further scale its support for early-stage companies, accelerating the growth of innovative startups in India and beyond. The firm is confident in the long-term potential of its portfolio and aims to continue delivering strong returns while contributing to the development of the global tech ecosystem.
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