Romulus Capital has raised USD50 million from a group of individual investors from the US, Western Europe, Russia, South Asia, the Middle East and Hong Kong.
The fundraising of Romulus’ second fund makes it one of the largest seed funds in the world.
“By design, few things about us fit the typical conventions of venture capital in the US,” says Krishna K Gupta, founder and managing partner. “We were one of the earliest movers at the seed stage and structured the firm to partner closely with entrepreneurs on strategy, operational, and sales objectives to build a strong foundation as if we were members of the team. We are 100 per cent aligned as partners. That comes from the DNA of the firm itself as an MIT start-up – we have a focus on building rather than betting on companies. It continues with who and where our investors are from, their business expertise and connections in markets around the world where our portfolio companies can grow. What we are not is a fund paying lip service to adding value and basing decisions on investment formulas that spread risk and play the odds of success. With this new fund, we now have the scale and experience to power a company through the early stages in a way few seed-stage firms do.”
Romulus Capital was founded in 2008 by Gupta while an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was co-founded by Anantshree Chaturvedi and Cankut Durgun. Neil Chheda joined the firm full-time in 2012 after the sale of his company.
Chheda and Gupta are leading the second fund. Capital raised in this second fund will be used to partner with approximately 25 new companies.
