IFC Backs Alteria Capital’s Shorter Duration Scheme in First Global SME Credit Investment:

The venture debt platform Alteria Capital has revealed that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has entered as the first anchor investor for its Shorter Duration Scheme (SDS), which also happens to be IFC's first investment in the SME credit space internationally.

SDS was launched last March as part of Fund III. It attempts to fulfill the short term (less than 18 months) debt capital needs of […] startups in fintech, consumer, electric vehicle (EV) sectors, among others.

Even though the firm is still yet to mark the final close of SDS, Alteria has already deployed the fund in Ivy Homes, Swara Fincare, Moneyview, and TENxYOU. Murali also said that he expects to make around 50 investments over the next couple of years and a half through this fund.

In an interview with Moneycontrol, Alteria Capital Managing Partner Vinod Murali shared, “We have ongoing discussions with some foreign and domestic investors which will take a few more months to close. We will raise some more capital, and are flexible on the sizing of the fund.”

Although Murali declined to share the target corpus for SDS, he did mention that the firm aimed to raise $250-$300 million in total through the third fund. The Venture Debt Scheme was closed at approximately $186 million and the remainder came from SDS.

"At SDS, we have a commitment period of two and a half years and we expect to return the capital in about twelve months after that. In four years or less, we have a product where we return capital with a strong fixed income return. A venture debt product would do so in five to seven years, but the returns have more equity upside,” explained Murali.

Up to sixty percent of the fund will be allocated to licensed non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), with the other forty percent allocated to consumer industries.

"For six decades, IFC has been leading impact investing in emerging markets. There is a profound need to develop new approaches to finance gaps,” noted Wendy Werner, Country Head for India and Maldives, IFC.

"These measures may help promote a India's start up and disruptive technology ecosystem, which in turn would lead to increased economic growth,” she added.

Alteria has supplied with a staggering sum of $800 million to assist the funding Indian start-ups. Recently, it achieved the record of becoming Asia's highest user of debt funding, topping the figure of $750 million.

Alteria's scope is wide reaching, including advanced Indian start-ups such as Spinny, Ola Electric, One Card, Rebel Foods, Ather, Bluestone, Jupiter, Fibe (Early Salary), Giva, Sarvagram and many others. This is possible due to the venture debts offered on the platform.

The current repletion of the IFC makes meander too easily construct the image of need cash within the India-centered venture capital firms as a dire need in $$ while these firms are out.

After failing to reach a target for VC funding 2024, many global brands put money to work, Accel Bomber and others fueled by the huge avalance of Indian startups IPOing and the return of the possibility of amassing funds.

The number of established startups with series A and B funding is increasing, which is highly likely to result in larger VC fundsed-owing to the combination of comuntative offering that some of these investors are making, as I mentioned from previous Moneycontrol news.