pi Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund, has announced the first close of its second fund at ₹300 crore ($40 million).

The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a base target corpus of ₹565 crore ($75 million ), including green shoe a target of ₹750 crore ($100 million). The final close of the fund is expected to happen in mid-2022.  First close is primarily driven by entrepreneurs, High Networth Individuals and family offices from across the globe.

Some of the names include Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Vikram Kailas, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, senior leaders from IBM, Facebook and Google among others.

The fund plans to invest in about 20-25 start-ups focused on disruptive AI and other forms of deep tech across sectors, including but not limited to blockchain, spacetech, biotech and material science. pi will continue to focus on early stage (seed/ pre-Series A/Series A) investments through this fund. 

Manish Singhal, founding partner at pi Ventures, told Businessline the deal values have increased marginally. The fund will invest $500,000 to $2 million in the first check. “The fund is sector agnostic and we are looking at companies that are solving global problems on the back of a very strong technology differentiation across various sectors like health care, enterprise, infrastructure, space tech, and biotech,” he added. 

Fund deployment

The fund is in an advanced stage of diligence, it is in an active deployment phase, and six to eight investments can be expected this year. The fund will also look beyond disruptive AI and consider investing in physical innovations as well.  

“The interest in our fund demonstrates the confidence of our investors in our team and our investment strategy. We will continue supporting early-stage entrepreneurs in the deep tech space and we take the learnings from our first fund portfolio to scale on this now proven strategy,” Singhal said. 

pi Ventures closed its Fund I of ₹225 crore ($30 million) in 2018. Fund 1 has backed 15 deep tech startups including Niramai, Pyxis, Wysa, Agnikul, and Locus among others. 

(with inputs from Haripriya Sureban)