Indico Capital Partners, a Portugal-based venture capital firm formed by ex-members of corporate venturing fund Caixa Capital, has achieved a €41m ($47m) first close for its inaugural fund.
The firm is led by managing general partner Stephan Morais, formerly head of Caixa Capital, financial services firm La Caixa’s venture capital arm, and general partner Ricardo Torgal, previously an investment manager at Caixa Capital.
The team is completed by Cristina Fonseca, co-founder of cloud-based contact centre software provider Talkdesk, who is a venture partner.
Indico is targeting €46m for the fund’s close, and European Union-owned small and medium-sized enterprise financing agency European Investment Fund is cornerstone investor.
The fund has attracted more than 20 limited partners including Portuguese state-owned investment firm Instituição Financeira de Desenvolvimento’s Portugal Tech initiative, VC firm Draper Esprit and unnamed pension funds, education and research institutions, wealth managers, high-net-worth individuals and entrepreneurs.
Indico will back startups in Spain and Portugal, with a focus on the latter, and make early-stage investments ranging from €150,000 to €5m per company. It will fund companies from the pre-seed and series A-stages through to later rounds.
The fund will target business-to-business software-as-a-service platforms, artificial intelligence, financial technology, cybersecurity, marketplaces and business-to-consumer platforms. It has already closed several deals it plans to formally announce in the near future.
Stephan Morais said: “This is a milestone for the Portuguese ecosystem, we will keep on supporting the most promising Portuguese, and increasingly Iberian, early-stage tech startups, but now with an independent stable investment platform backed by a diversified global LP base.”
