New Delhi, Jan 20 (PTI) Early-stage venture fund Pi Ventures on Thursday announced the first closing of its Fund II at Rs 300 crore (USD 40 million).
The fund was launched in March last year with a base target corpus of Rs 565 crore (USD 75 million), and a greenshoe option of about USD 25 million, taking the total fund target to Rs 750 crore (USD 100 million).
The fund is expected to close in mid-2022.
The first close is primarily driven by entrepreneurs, HNIs and family offices from across the globe, including Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Vikram Kailas, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra as well as senior leaders from IBM, Facebook, Google among others, a statement said.
“The fund expects to invest in about 20-25 startups focused on disruptive AI and other forms of deep tech across sectors, including but not limited to Blockchain, space tech, biotech, material science,” it added.
Pi Ventures said it will continue to focus on early-stage (seed/pre-series A/series A) investments via this fund.
Established in 2016 by Manish Singhal, Pi Ventures closed its Fund I of Rs 225 crore (USD 30 million) in 2018.
The first fund exceeded its target and was oversubscribed, with the backing of an experienced group of investors from around the globe like CDC UK, IFC World Bank, SIDBI, ICC, Accel Partners and prominent family offices and entrepreneurs from several countries.
Fund I has backed 15 deep tech startups, including Niramai, Pyxis, Wysa, Agnikul, Locus and others.
“We are excited to announce the first close of our second fund to support and boost the AI and deep-tech startup ecosystem in India amid the ongoing pandemic. The interest in our fund demonstrates the confidence of our investors in our team and our investment strategy,” Manish Singhal, Founding Partner at Pi Ventures, said.
He added that Pi Ventures will continue supporting early-stage entrepreneurs in the deep tech space.
“…we take the learnings from our first fund portfolio to scale on this now proven strategy. We are committed to looking out for talented entrepreneurs with unconventional ideas and who are creating disruptive products that solve big global fundamental problems with innovative technology backed solutions,” he said. PTI SR BAL BAL
