Arkam Ventures bullish on manufacturing, EV startups

livemint.com:

BENGALURU : Digital tech-focused Arkam Ventures has included electric vehicles and manufacturing as areas of focus for its second venture capital fund, in addition to fintech, skilling, software-as-a-service, logistics, and food agriculture, a top executive said. The second fund, thematically, has a multi-fund thesis, said Bala Srinivasa, managing director at Arkam Ventures. “In this fund, you will see a mix of sectors connected by the digitization thesis.

We have added manufacturing and EVs as we just think there are more urgent themes that need to be justified." Arkam Ventures–which has invested in companies including business-to-business marketplace Jumbotail, investment startup Jar, and lending platform Kreditbee–launched its $180 million second fund last year. The firm is in the process of closing the fundraising for this fund. On Tuesday, Arkam marked its first investment in the manufacturing space, jointly leading a $6.3 million Series A funding round in custom manufacturing platform Karkhana.io, along with Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital.

Karkhana.io offers solutions for contract manufacturing across categories like product assembly and product localization. “Everybody has come to the conclusion that more transparency, visibility and higher quality needs to be done through technology, and that’s what drove us into investing in a platform like Karkhana," said Srinivasa. The funding into Karkhana was from Arkam’s first fund.