Inventure Fund II holds first close on €50m

Inventure started pre-marketing the fund in Q4 2012. The vehicle has a target of €75m with a €80m hard-cap and will continue fundraising in 2014 with a view to holding a final close in Q2. The second close is expected to include fewer investors with one or two institutional investors.

The Finland-based fund has a 10-year lifespan and two potential one-year extensions. New fundraising can be done after the fourth year or after 60% of the fund has been invested. Inventure Fund II has already signed two investments.

Inventure Fund I, an early-stage venture capital fund launched in 2008, held a final close at €42m in January 2009 and has made 16 investments so far. Inventure also has two minor seed funds and one secondary fund.

Inventure operates in Helsinki and Shanghai and focuses on early-stage investments in the devices, electronics and components sector, as well as in the mobile internet and software industries. Inventure's previous fund portfolios include Canatu, Rightware, Merus Power, Freespee, Conmio and Thinglink.

Investors
The fund attracted commitments from institutional investors, pension funds and funds-of-funds including the European Investment Fund (EIF), FoF Growth, Finnish Industry Investment, Sandvik Pensionsfond and Sitra, as well as several private investors.

The fund is also supported by the EU through the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP).

Family offices also provided some minor investments. In total 20 LPs, including 10 institutional investors, came in at first close. Apart from Luxembourg-based EIF, all investors are Finnish.

Investments
Inventure Fund II will invest in around 20 high-tech companies in Finland, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. Inventure has a long-term strategy of focusing on hardware.

The fund will make five to six investments per year, including a few seed investments. It can take stakes of up to 20% but will typically secure 10-15% holdings. The first tickets will stand at around €1-2m, holding back capital in order to invest more in series-B and -C financing rounds. This is a strategy that Inventure has used for previous vehicles.

People
Inventure's venture capital team includes managing director Sami Lampinen, Timo Tirkkonen, Tuomas Kosonen and Fei Xu. Esko Torsti is the chairman of the Investment Council of FoF Growth and director at Ilmarinen. Tatiana Issaeva is a venture capital investment manager at EIF. Anne Riekki is a director at Finnish Industry Investment.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Nordics
• Technology
• Venture
• Finland