Yali Capital Closes Maiden Deeptech Fund At INR 893 Cr

SUMMARY

The VC firm launched the early stage fund at INR 810 Cr in July last year to back startups operating in the deeptech sector

The company has raised capital from Infosys, Qualcomm Ventures, DPIIT Fund of Funds for Startups and Evolvence, among others

Yali Capital initially set its target close to INR 500 Cr, with an additional greenshoe option of INR 310 Cr

Venture capital firm Yali Capital has closed its maiden deeptech-focussed fund at INR 893 Cr ($103.2 Mn).

The VC firm launched the early stage fund at INR 810 Cr in July last year to back startups operating in the deeptech sector.

The fund aims to invest in startups across chip design, robotics, genomics, smart manufacturing, aerospace and AI sectors.

The company has raised capital from corporates such as Infosys, Qualcomm Ventures, DPIIT Fund of Funds for Startups and Evolvence, among others.

Additionally, TVS Capital founder Gopal Srinivasan Rare Enterprises chief executive Utpal Sheth JM Financial’s managing director Vishal Kampani are among its notable investors.

Yali Capital is a SEBI-approved Category 2 AIF and had initially set its target close to INR 500 Cr, with an additional greenshoe option of INR 310 Cr.

Established in 2024, the Bengaluru-based venture capital firm was floated by Cosmic Circuits’s cofounder Ganapathy Subramaniam and former Blackstone executive Mathew Cyriac.

Subramaniam holds more than 15 years of experience in the semiconductor space at Texas Instruments and founded Cosmic Circuits after TI. He has also individually backed listed drone maker ideaForge, and deeptech startups like Tonbo Imaging, and Aurasemi via Celesta Capital.

Commenting on the rationale behind backing deeptech startups, Subramaniam told Inc42 that China is well ahead in the deeptech space and has overtaken America. India has all the potential from services to deeptech, but certainly has much distance to cover.

Yali Capital has already made five investments including genomics startup 4baseCare as well as robotics startup Perceptyne Robots and fabless chip design company C2i Semiconductors, and it plans to expand its portfolio to eight companies by the end of the year.

The development comes at a time when the government is establishing an INR 1 Lakh Cr corpus to boost research and development in the deeptech sector, particularly within sunrise industries.

The government also approved a second tranche of INR 10,000 Cr deeptech fund allocation earlier this month.

Meanwhile, investors are also equally stirred to make their bets in the sector, on the back of booming market opportunity.

Early stage venture capital firm Riceberg Ventures has launched a $20 Mn (around INR 173.4 Cr) fund to invest in deeptech startups in January.

Following which, VC firm 247VC unveiled its first fund with a target corpus of INR 250 Cr ($30 Mn) two months ago, to invest in startups from deeptech, consumption, enterprise tech, and industry 5.0.