PruVen Capital, a global, multistage venture firm backed by Prudential Financial, has launched its first fund with $300 million in capital to invest in technology startups that are still in development.
The firm has a focus on startups in North America, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Australia.
Led by Ramneek Gupta, PruVen Capital will invest in transformational startups in the insurtech, fintech, healthtech, real estate tech and enterprise IT verticals.
He previously led investments in Square, Jet.com, DocuSign and Honey as a co-founder of the venture investing efforts at Citigroup.
The core investment team also includes Travis Skelly, Victoria Cheng and Adi Sivaraman.
Gupta commented: “PruVen Capital is driven to create both financial and strategic value for its stakeholders. Our multi-stage approach allows us to support leading entrepreneurs from garage to IPO.”
“We offer the best of both worlds in being a completely autonomous fund that’s backed by the resources of Prudential, the largest life insurer in the U.S. with more than $4 trillion of gross life insurance in force (i) and more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management as of Sept. 30, 2020.”
The Fund will have a five-year investment period and an annual investment pace of $50 million to $75 million a year.
It will target companies from post-product on the early side to growth and pre-IPO on the late side. It will invest $5 million on the low end with a target of $10 million to $15 million on average over the lifecycle of the company with a maximum of $30 million invested in any single company.
PruVen Capital has already made investments in Newfront Insurance, a digital insurance brokerage and DataRobot, an e2e machine learning platform for enterprises.
Charles Lowrey, Prudential’s chairman and CEO said: “PruVen Capital supports Prudential’s efforts to bring the kind of innovative products and services to the marketplace our customers expect.
“Having an experienced venture capital executive like Ramneek Gupta along with access to the resources and deep experience of Prudential is a clear competitive advantage for early stage firms.”
