Former Citi, Battery VC Has New $378M Fund to Help Startups Land Prudential, Mutual of Omaha and Others as Investors and Clients

PruVen Capital, a financial technology and insurance venture capital fund founded by former Benchmark and Citi venture capitalist Ramneek Gupta, has closed a new $378.5 million Fund II to invest in financial services and enterprise-focused startups.

This second fund is significant because Gupta has expanded it beyond a corporate fund with a single lead LP—Prudential Financial—to one backed by a number of financial and insurance LPs. Prudential Financial is the lead investor, but the fund also includes TIAA, Lincoln Financial, Generali, Nippon Life, Mutual of Omaha and Willis Towers Watson. Prudential was a solo LP in Pruven’s first $300 million fund.

Gupta expects to complete investments from Fund I and begin investing from Fund II by the end of this month.

PruVen competes by offering portfolio companies access to partnerships with these top global insurance companies as clients. This not only helps them gain a huge first customer, but also gives LPs first look at emerging technologies.

Insurance and financial services companies are incredibly tech-savvy and are eager to not only invest in startups but also partner with them, Gupta says. He emphasizes that their partnerships are significant because they are “real companies” with real revenues and profits. They tend to be long-term customers involved in everything from consumer to B2B, and at scale, he said.

It was something Gupta craved while working at companies like Zappedy, acquired by Groupon in 2011. The company worked to close the online-to-offline loop in the daily deals space.

Previously a principal at ITU Ventures and a partner at Battery Ventures, Gupta decided to get back into investing after the acquisition. During that time, he thought about what would make him a better investor.

“I kept coming back to what would have happened if someone had been able to help me with that first reference customer,” he told TechCrunch. “As a founder, I would have given an arm and a leg.”

He didn’t strike out on his own right away, but got a call from Citi, which wanted him to help build Citi Ventures, which he did for the next nine years. During that time, he tested the “first reference client” hypothesis and created a playbook to sustain it.

From 2011 to 2020, the global investment team has invested in 140 companies, including Square, Jet.com, Docusign, and Honey. Thanks to the team’s efforts, more than half of the companies have achieved real commercial benefits by partnering with Citi.

In 2020, Gupta left Citi Ventures to found PruVen.

“I had proof that finding that first reference customer creates a lot of cross-value, and I had a playbook for how to do that,” Gupta said. “That’s when I decided to improve the structure by creating an independent company structure.”

Then he joined forces with Prudential. As an independent firm, he said he was able to move quickly to build an even larger network of LPs for his next fund.

Gupta’s first fund, launched four years ago, has invested in companies including Bilt Rewards, Newfront Insurance, Angle Health, Contabilizei, UniteUs and Pismo, which was acquired by Visa for $1 billion in 2023.

Gupta said it was too early to discuss the return on investment for Fund 1, but added that currently 10% of the first fund is being distributed to paid-in capital (DPI).

“We feel like we have some really good winners,” he said. “Of course, it takes time for all of these things to develop, mature and become profitable. The best thing I can tell you is that we have real DPI and money returned to our LPs. Even though it’s early days, it’s a strong signal to them that the model is working.”