Magenta Venture Partners, an Israel-based venture capital firm co-founded by diversified conglomerate Mitsui & Co, launched yesterday with a $100m target for the close of its first fund.
The firm achieved an initial close of the fund in October 2018 and expects to complete fundraising activities this year. Apart from Mitsui itself, the fund’s backers include lighting equipment producer Koito Manufacturing.
Early-stage startups based in Israel are the primary focus for Magenta, and it will seek out opportunities in the automotive, mobility, artificial intelligence, smart cities, industry 4.0, enterprise software and fintech sectors.
Mitsui is represented at Magenta by general partners Hiroshi Takeuchi and Atsushi Mizuno, the latter of which is still an investment director at corporate venturing unit Mitsui Global Investment.
The other two GPs are co-founders Ori Israely and Ran Levitzky. Israely was director of investments at Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, a subsidiary of communications technology provider Motorola Solutions, until November 2018 while Levitzky was a principal at VC firm Viola Ventures until October.
Ron Shvili, chief technology officer and vice-president of technology and information systems for telecommunications group Cellcom, has joined Magenta’s advisory board.
Israely said: “Our fund is a financially focused, but we look to invest in startups that not only look for capital but also seek value driven by the team’s experience in Japan, EU and the USA.
“We also leverage our investors to analyse and validate investments, assist the portfolio and help all the startups we engage during this process.”
