Startup funding in India is expanding deeper into the SME-to-IPO pipeline: financial services and merchant banking firm Getfive Funds has secured regulatory approval from SEBI to launch Getfive Opportunity Fund II, a Category-I Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) with a target corpus of ₹500 crore.
The fund, announced on October 14, 2026, will back growth-stage small and medium enterprises across Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets in India. Its mandate is deliberately wide: defence, aerospace and space-tech, deep-tech and precision engineering, advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, fintech, agritech, logistics, renewables — a map of India's industrial-transformation priorities.
Bridging venture and public markets
Shrikant Goyal, Managing Director and fund manager at Getfive Funds, will helm the vehicle, which will apply the firm's proprietary 'V3' (V-Cube) framework — Vision Through Promoter, Value Through Company, Velocity Through Industry — to evaluate businesses. Getfive projects roughly 400 SME companies listing on BSE SME and NSE Emerge over the next three to four years.
The fund's thesis is that institutional capital plays a critical role in vetting balance sheets and instilling governance before companies approach public markets — bridging the financing gap between early-stage venture funding and mainstream equity capital markets.
Why it matters for founders
A ₹500 crore SEBI-registered AIF focused on SMEs is institutional capital voting for the listing pipeline — good news for founders eyeing an SME IPO in 3–5 years. Clean receivables, sane inventories and three-year operational hygiene, in Getfive's own words, are what separate fundable SMEs from speculative ones.