Facebook Co-Founder On Hunt For Startups With $820M Fund

Billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s budding venture capital firm has raised a new $820 million fund for investments in startups, a move that comes at a time when many entrepreneurs are struggling amid a sharp decline in financing deals.

B Capital Group, launched five years ago by Saverin and former Bain Capital executive Raj Ganguly, and backed by Boston Consulting Group, announced Tuesday (June 30) it had closed on its second fund, with plans to invest the $820 million “in growth-stage startups” that are “transforming large industries and scaling rapidly.”

The new fund brings B Capital’s total assets under management to $1.44 billion, with the San Francisco-based venture capital firm focusing on startups in FinTech, enterprise software, transportation and logistics, healthcare technology and “consumer enablement technology.”

The venture capital firm’s portfolio of startups includes Bangalore-based Khatabook, which “digitizes local businesses through bookkeeping and online payments,” and Synack, a Silicon Valley startup with a crowdsourced cybersecurity testing platform, Capital B noted in its press release.

COVID-19 has been a challenge for many startups, with at least two different surveys finding a decline in the number of venture capital deals over the first half of 2020.

However, the crisis has also created new opportunities as well for startups, with the pandemic having “thrust the world into a new digital age, exposing areas that need to be reimagined,” B Capital Group noted in its announcement on the $820 million fund, its second fund.

“When we founded B Capital Group, Raj and I were committed to building a firm that looks for innovation off the beaten path and technology that has applications beyond just one region,” Saverin said in press statement. “We wanted to set a new standard for growth-stage investing.”

B Capital’s typical investment ranges from $10 million to $60 million, targeted at “companies in Series B, C and D stages that are positioned for rapid expansion,” the firm said in its announcement.