Index Ventures has raised a new €350 million venture fund targeting early-stage european companies. With the new fund, Index will make around 30 investments anywhere from a few hundred thousand, to up to 15 million in companies in the seed and series A and B stages. Index also recently raised a Growth fund, which can provide further capital to these companies. All together, Index Ventures is on a roll raising €1 billion over the last 12 months, with separate funds for the Growth and Life Science sectors.
Index’s focus with the new fund is in companies who are likely to become global category winners, U.S. companies with international breakout potential, and companies capable of dominating large National or Regional markets, such as Just-Eat.
Ben Holmes, Partner at Index Ventures, tells ArcticStartup that in the Nordics and Baltics, he’s seeing positive trends in the mobile sector, with Rebtel’s recent growth as a positive example. iZettle, another of Index’s investments, also exemplifies a couple positive trends he’s seeing in the Nordics by hitting both the mobile and financial services sectors. Gaming companies are also hot in the region, with one example being Index Venture’s investment in Helsinki-based Grey Area Labs, the creators of Shadow Cities
But in general, the exciting areas Index is interested in is includes commerce, marketplaces, cloud and big data, mobile and social, as well as finical services.
Index ventures points out that in the last year at least 20 companies in their portfolio made combined revenues of over €1 Billion, and employ over 5 000. “Clearly theres a lot of interesting stuff happening in Europe, and not all of it promising for in the future, but within the context of venture exits Index’s point of light is that has been able to raise money, and I believe that brings up three points.
“First our investors still believe that venture funds are a great way to make great returns, and secondly they’re reiterated their confidence in Index. Thirdly it means that our investors believe they can get on par the same returns as what they could get from venture funds in the U.S. We believe this is great news for Index and great news for Europe.”
