Early stage venture fund, pi Ventures has announced the final close of their first fund at ₹225 crore, which exceeds the initial target of ₹195 crore. With a focus on new age technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT, it plans to invest in 18-20 deep tech startups in India in the next 3-4 years with a significant portion allocated for follow-ons as well. It will keep backing startups in in health-tech, logistics, retail, fintech and enterprise sectors.
The recent investment has come from CDC Group UK that invested 40 Cr in the company. The other key contributors to the fund include Chairman of Hero Enterprise Sunil Kant Munjal, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Electronic Development Fund (managed by Canbank Ventures), SIDBI, prominent family offices from USA, Canada, Singapore & India and leading entrepreneurs like Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikhchandani and Bhupen Shah among others. The fund is co-sponsored by In Color Capital of Canada. The fund has received 60% of its corpus from Institutional investors and majority from Indian LPs.
The fund was founded by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni. Abishek Surendran joined the fund as a partner in 2017. Combined, they bring several decades of experience in technology, products and investing. The team is further supported by Shamik Sharma, ex-Chief Product & Technology Officer, Myntra who is a Venture Partner in the fund.
Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, said, “We are thankful of the support from like-minded individuals and partners who believe in our investment thesis of backing innovation and disruption that solves real world problems through Applied AI. India AI ecosystem is at an interesting intersection of data, talent and market need. We are very excited to have an opportunity to back startups which are creating global solutions from India.”
pi Ventures has so far announced investments in deep tech startups like SigTuple, ten3T, NIRAMAI, Zenatix, CustomerSuccessBox and Locus.sh.
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