We’ve been hearing a lot about cooling valuations for once-hot startups and a general tightening of the VC purse strings. But if sums are becoming more modest, there are still investments to be made, funds getting raised, and ever more VCs emerging.
A case in point is Titanium Investments. The young Moscow-based VC that got its start investing in Russian and Israeli startups, today it is announcing that it has raised a new $50 million fund to continue building out its portfolio both in those countries and further afield, with an emphasis on software-as-a-service, Internet of Things, and virtual reality and augmented reality startups.
This latest fund comes in the wake of Titanium having invested some $20 million to date. That may sound like a modest amount of money in today’s investing climate. The VC says that the collective valuation of its portfolio is over $350 million, with Titanium holding anywhere between 3% and 17% of each company.
Startups in the portfolio include Feedvisor, Mantis Vision (the Project Tango partner), BrightInfo (content personalization), NanoRep (online self-service), Any.do, Cloudyn, Mentad, Roojoom, Drippler, Cloudpayments (Stripe-like easy payment service integration), Aitype, Imonomy, Cimagine, MUV interactive (makers of the Bird wearable controller), and 365Scores. One startup, Moment.me, was acquired by Wix in 2015.
Given that Titanium commits to investing in subsequent rounds after making initial investments, I’d make a guess that some of the $50 million will go towards supporting some of these earlier companies.
“We see Titanium as a partner in addition to being an investor. We try to be very involved in the business process,” said Titanium Investments’ CEO, Alexander Ayvazov in a statement. Ayvazov and his partners sit on the boards of several of the companies his fund has invested in, “and are very involved in all of them. Not many funds play such an active role. Titanium is a chemical element that brings completely new features to regular metals, making it possible for new materials to be crafted. That’s how we work at Titanium Investments, seeking out companies we can have a positive impact on, helping them make it to the next level.”