Cisco Invests in Tech fund Stellaris Venture Partners

Early-stage technology-focused startup fund Stellaris Venture Partners has raised an undisclosed amount from Cisco Investments, an arm of US-based network gear maker Cisco. Cisco is the third major known technology corporation to back the new fund, which has also seen Infosys and SAP come in as limited partners (LPs).

According to ET reports, in February 2017 the fund had raised $50 mn from investors including Infosys and Sidbi, the country’s top lender to small businesses.

Cisco’s investment is part of the company’s first fund target of $100 million.

“Over the past three decades, India has created an exception talent pool for technology products, which is leading to the creation of globally competitive software product companies,” said Alok Goyal, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners. “We look forward to tapping into their deep technology expertise and global market reach for the benefit of our portfolio companies.”

The fund invests in startups within sectors including core enterprise technologies such as cloud, IoT, machine learning, enterprise applications and analytics. Besides, the fund also scouts for startups that focus on answering Indiaspecific problems, which are consumer or business centric in nature. Stellaris has backed companies like Whatfix, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise solution provider, and frontline staff communication platform Noticeboard.