Engineering Capital founded with $32m backing from consortium including a university endowment.
Venture capitalist Ashmeet Sidana (pictured), formerly of Silicon Valley-based Foundation Capital, has formed Engineering Capital, an investment firm aimed at ICT startups.
Sidana has raised $32m in Engineering’s first fundraise, oversubscribed from the original target of $25m. The backers include an unnamed university endowment fund, a foundation, a fund-of-funds. Serial entrepreneur Steve Plant and Scott Bonham, a founding partner at GGV Capital, also backed the raise.
The firm will be making investments between $500,000 and $1m, and expects to make between 12 to 18 investments from the fund. The fund will also continue to back its portfolio in subsequent rounds through to exit.
Sidana told news provider Wall Street Journal: “The value I want to bring is true technical insight into the market and real hands-on help in building your company. Typically my entrepreneurs are executives [who] understand how enterprises work. They’re still pretty young, in their 30s, [but] they have experience and are not kids. They’re not living in a frat house throwing ideas on a wall.”
