The second fund’s final close has been announced by early-stage venture capital firm pi Ventures, with a commitment of Rs 702 crore, or $85 million.
The fund will prioritize deeptech and AI startups in a variety of industries, including material science, biotech, spacetech, and blockchain.
Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Colruyt, Accel, Premji Invest, British International Investments (BII), and Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, Samit Shetty, Varun Alagh, Anupam Mittal, and Hitesh Oberoi are among the entrepreneurs who support the second fund. Prominent figures from Google, Facebook, and IBM also contributed to Pi Ventures’ second fund.
Manish Singhal founded pi Ventures in 2016, and it closed its Fund I in 2018 for a total of Rs 225 crores, or $30 million. 15 deep tech startups, including Niramai, Pixis, Wysa, Agnikul, and Locus, to mention a few, have received funding from the first fund. With a target corpus of Rs 675 crores ($90 million) and a green shoe option of Rs 750 crore ($100 million), the second fund was introduced in March 2021.
The fund states that it will keep its attention on seed to Series A investment rounds. It has already made investments in seven startups: Ottonomy.IO, Preimage, ImmunitoAI, Silence Laboratories, and Zero Cow Factory.
A commitment of Rs. 100 crores, or 15% of the corpus, was given to pi Ventures in April of this year by the SIDBI-managed Fund of Funds for Startups.
