When Prime Venture Partners (PVP) launched its first fund in 2012 with a modest corpus of $8 Mn, India’s startup ecosystem was still finding its footing. And now five funds later, Prime has seen the whole maturity cycle of the Indian startup ecosystem play out.

But 2012 was a time before UPI and India Stack and AI was something not many understood. Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya, and Amit Somani, the founding partners of the venture capital firm, had little doubt that a digital inflection point was around the corner in India.

Serial entrepreneurs and operators with stints in Silicon Valley, the trio had already been on the frontlines of building digital infrastructure for India — working on Aadhaar and mobile payments startup Eko as full-time volunteers.

“We had seen the early signs,” recalled Swamy. “India was on the cusp of a massive digital transformation, and we’d had a small hand in shaping it. We felt it was time to play a bigger role—as investors.”

Swamy’s early bets, like ZipDial (acquired by Twitter) and Ezetap, proved prescient. Both delivered strong outcomes and helped validate the firm’s high-conviction, hands-on model, one that has remained consistent across Prime’s subsequent four funds.

With a disciplined focus on concentrated portfolios, PVP has backed startups like NiYO, MyGate, Recko (acquired by Stripe), Happay, HackerEarth, and Dozee, often as the first institutional investor.

Now, with its fifth fund of $100 Mn closed and deployment underway, PVP is doubling down on the formula that’s defined its journey over the past 13 years. But it’s doing so in an India that looks vastly different from 2012.

The country has leapfrogged into a digital-first economy, where payments, logistics, and customer acquisition are far more seamless. Tier 2 and Tier 3 India is no longer an afterthought. Over the past four years, Indian startups have also shown some credible exits through IPOs besides secondaries. So now even early stage VCs can dare to be a bit more certain about exits and long-term value creation.

“We believe India now offers the opportunity to build capital-efficient companies that can go all the way to IPO,” cofounder and managing partner Sanjay Swamy tells Inc42, adding, “That wasn’t true a decade ago.”

Prime Venture’s latest fund continues to target 16–18 early-stage companies, with cheque sizes between $1.5 Mn–$3 Mn. While fintech remains a core focus, vertical SaaS, AI, and deeptech are now firmly in the mix.

But the DNA of the firm remains unchanged: early believers, hands-on partners, and no half bets. “We don’t do copycats. If we’re in, we’re all in,” Swamy adds.

Swamy spoke on Prime’s investment philosophy, its latest deployment strategy, and why early-stage VC success takes a long time in India.

Here are edited excerpts:

Inc42: Prime Ventures........

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