Deeptech Investor pi Ventures Bags INR 100 Cr To Back Early Stage Startups

Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures, which backs AI and deeptech startups, has received commitments of INR 100 Cr or 15% of the corpus from SIDBI-managed Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS).

pi Ventures will utilise the funds to back Seed, Pre-Series A and Series A startups working in AI and deeptech segments. So far, it has invested in seven startups including India-based ImmunitoAI and Preimage, US-based Ottonomy.IO and Singapore-based Silence Laboratories, among others. 

The development comes after pi Ventures received INR 22 Cr from Belgium’s Colruyt Group in the last week of March 2023. 

pi Ventures, founded in 2016 by Manish Singhal, closed an INR 225 Cr first fund (Fund I) in 2018. With the first fund, it backed 15 deeptech startups including Niramai, Pixis, Wysa, Agnikul,  Locus to name a few. 

In March 2021, it rolled out its second fund with a corpus of $90 Mn, and greenshoe option to a target of $100 Mn.

“We are delighted to welcome  FFS 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,” said Manish Singhal, founding partner of pi Ventures.

On the other hand, Small Industries Development Bank of India’s (SIDBI) FFS was founded in January 2016. The FFS has a corpus of INR 10,000 Cr and is expected to close between a corpus of INR 675 Cr and INR 750 Cr, in the second quarter of 2023. 

The FFS fund is backed by BII, Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF, Accel, Colruyt, Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, senior leaders from IBM, Facebook and Google among others. 

The fund infusion has come at a time when the Indian startup ecosystem has been going through a funding crisis, market inflation, impending recession etc. 

However, investment firms including VCs, private equity and hedge funds are keeping the hope alive with making investments in domestic startups to brace them up against the current winds. 

A similar trend was seen in the previous year, where 126 funds collectively secured $18 Bn, as per Inc42 data.