Prudential launches venture fund PruVen Capital
PruVen Capital, a global, multistage venture firm backed by Prudential Financial, has formally launched its first fund with $300 million in capital to invest in emergent technology startups in North America, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Australia.
Led by Ramneek Gupta who led early-stage investments in Square, Jet.com, DocuSign and Honey as a co-founder of the venture investing efforts at Citigroup, PruVen Capital will invest in transformational startups in the insurtech, fintech, healthtech, real estate tech and enterprise IT verticals.
“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,” said Gupta. “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.”
In addition to Gupta, the core investment team includes Travis Skelly, Victoria Cheng and Adi Sivaraman. 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 will strategically partner with Prudential’s “catalyst network”—a capability that provides entrepreneurs access to Prudential’s thought leaders and experts.
“PruVen Capital supports Prudential’s efforts to bring the kind of innovative products and services to the marketplace our customers expect,” said Charles Lowrey, Prudential’s chairman and CEO. “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.”
PruVen Capital, which has already made investments in Newfront Insurance, a digital first insurance brokerage focused on midmarket clients in the commercial insurance and employee benefits space, and DataRobot, an e2e machine learning platform for enterprises, looks to partner with visionary founders with a desire to create enduring companies. PruVen Capital’s model offers the independence and decision-making speed of a traditional venture fund, while channeling Prudential’s global scale and domain expertise to help PruVen’s portfolio companies grow into becoming the household names of tomorrow.
“We seek to work with founders who have the vision and the zeal to create lasting companies,” said Gupta.
