'Strong digital strategy vital for any company'

Bengaluru-based growth and private equity mid-market firm Amicus Capital is on track to close its second fund. It expects to mop up as much as $200 million and has received commitments from offshore investors such as the US International Development Finance Corp and the European Investment Bank.

- Malvika Maloo

Amicus has so far invested in 12 companies such as RenewBuy, mCaffeine, Awign and MoEngage. It has exited one and plans to invest in 10-12 startups from the second fund with an average ticket size of $10-15 million.

The firm, which has assets of $155 million under management, was launched in 2015 by Mahesh Parasuraman, a former director at Carlyle, and Sunil Vasudevan, former partner at True North. Parasuraman, partner and co-founder at Amicus, spoke to VCCircle about the firm's investment principles and strategy. Edited excerpts:

What's your investment thesis?

The focus is to invest in companies once their business model is proven. So, the risk we're taking as a fund is the scalability of the business. There are four key pillars that form our investment thesis.

The first one is picking capital-efficient businesses. This has been our thesis since the beginning, which means that (we invest in) businesses with great metrics and are profitable or are very close to profitability.