pi Ventures Completes First Close Of Its Fund II At INR 300 Cr To Invest In Deeptech Startups

Early-stage venture capital firm pi Ventures has completed the first close of its Fund II at INR 300 Cr ($40 Mn).

Founded in 2016 by Manish Singhal, pi Ventures closed its first fund (Fund I) with INR 225 Cr ($30 Mn) in 2018, with participation from DC UK, IFC World Bank, SIDBI, ICC, Accel Partners and others.

The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a target corpus of INR 565 Cr ($75 Mn) with a greenshoe target of INR 750 Cr ($100 Mn). The fund plans to invest in 20-25 startups in the fields of blockchain, spacetech, biotech, and material science.

Investors in the first close of Fund II include Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Vikram Kailas, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, along with senior leaders from IBM, Facebook, Google and others along with HNIs (high net worth individuals) and family offices.

“We will continue supporting early-stage entrepreneurs in the deeptech space and 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,” said Manish Singhal, founding partner at pi Ventures. 

According to Inc42 analysis, about $6.2 Bn had been raised by 62 funds across categories (VC, Debt, CVC, Micro VCs) to back the booming Indian startup economy in 2021. Of these 62 funds, nine are Corporate Venture Capital funds (or CVCs) and 12 are Micro VCs. 

Indian tech startups raised more than $41.4 Bn across 1,579 deals in 2021, a number that is much higher than the figure raised in the last three years combined ($37 Bn). 

More than 42 Indian unicorns were minted last year, close to the total number of unicorns minted in all the previous years combined. Indian startups also raised more than $7.3 Bn through initial public offerings (IPOs) last year.

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