Venture Capital firm Index Ventures has closed its largest ever growth fund after raising €500 million (£430 million) to invest in fast-growing globally ambitious technology businesses.

Index, which is an investor in Skype, Playfish and LoveFilm, aims to make equity investments of between €10 million and €50 million from its second late-stage fund. Principally, the firm hopes to target businesses that have growing sales of more than 50 per cent a year and which aim to scale internationally either from Europe or the US.

The fundraising significantly exceeds the firm’s first €400 million fund that was raised in January 2008, which backed companies including online retailer ASOS, wireless music systems maker Sonos and notebook maker Moleskin. The firm made its first investment from the new fund last month in Dropbox, the online storage provider.

The announcement of the fund close has been made in tandem following the opening of a new office in San Francisco and a second office in London near Old Street, in addition to its presence in London’s West End and Geneva.

In the past year, Index has achieved more than 15 exits, including IPOs such as Betfair and RPX, and trade sales like Cloud.com, Lovefilm and Gluster. It has also made 48 new investments including Adyen, Dropbox, Factual, Housetrip, Lookout, Soluto and Soundcloud.

Earlier this week, France Telecom and Publicis Groupe announced they had committed €150 million to launch a new fund aimed at French and European digital entrepreneurs. The joint venture aims to attract further investors to double the investment amount to €300 million.