Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures, which invests in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep-tech startups, has received a commitment of Rs 100 crore, or 15% of the corpus out of Fund of Funds for Startups managed by Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi).
The investment comes a year after pi Ventures announced an investment of Rs 22 crore from Belgium’s Colruyt Group in its second fund. In January 2022, the VC fund announced the first close of its second fund at Rs 303.5 crore ($40 million), raising funds from entrepreneurs, HNIs (high net worth individuals) and family offices across the globe.
With the commitment out of Sidbi’s fund of funds, pi Ventures is on track to do its final close in the second quarter of CY2023 in the range of Rs 675 crore to Rs 750 crore.
“We are delighted to welcome Fund of Funds again in our second fund. The confidence in our team and our investment strategy reinforces our commitment to support talented entrepreneurs who are creating disruptive products that solve fundamental real-world problems with innovative technology backed solutions,” Manish Singhal, founding partner, pi Ventures, said.
The fund is backed by BII, Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Accel, Colruyt, and entrepreneurs & family offices such as Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, and senior leaders from IBM, Facebook and Google, among others.
pi Ventures will continue to focus on early stage (seed/ pre-Series A/Series A) investments via this fund. Its strategy will be to invest in startups focused on disruptive AI and other forms of deep tech across sectors, including but not limited to blockchain, spacetech, biotech and material science among others.
So far, pi Ventures has committed investments in seven startups, including ImmunitoAI, Ottonomy.IO, Silence Laboratories, Preimage and three other ventures. The fund now plans to invest in 20-25 such startups in the coming two to three years.
Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) was unveiled in 2016 in line with the Startup India action plan. It has a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore for contribution to various Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) registered with Sebi.
Established in 2016 by Singhal, pi Ventures closed its first fund of Rs 225 crore ($30 million) in 2018. It exceeded its target and was oversubscribed, and has backed 15 deep tech startups, including Niramai, Pixis, Wysa, Agnikul and Locus. The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a base target corpus of Rs 675 crore ($90 million) and including greenshoe, a target of Rs 750 crore ($100 million).