Insurance and investment management giant Prudential Financial has launched a $300m venture capital fund, its first through subsidiary PruVen Capital.
PruVen, which is led by former Citi global venture investing co-head and ex-Battery Ventures partner Ramneek Gupta, is set to target emergent technology startups in North America, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Australia.
Gupta previously led early-stage investments in Square, Jet.com, DocuSign and Honey as a co-founder of the venture investing efforts at Citigroup.
Target sectors for PruVen Capital will include insurtech, fintech, healthtech, real estate tech and enterprise IT.
Gupta said, “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.
“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 $4tn of gross life insurance in force and more than $1.5tn in assets under management as of September 30.”
The fund will have a five-year investment period and an annual investment pace of $50m to $75m.
It will target companies from post-product on the early side to growth and pre-IPO on the late side.
PruVen Capital 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.
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