Comments
Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures, which invests in AI and deep tech start-ups, has raised $8 million from British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor for its second fund.
With the BII investment, the fund is currently tracking confirmed investments of over ₹530 crore and plans to do its final close in the first quarter of CY2023 in the range of ₹565 crore to ₹750 crore.
The investment comes after pi Ventures announced the first closing of its second fund at ₹303.5 crore early this year, raising funds from entrepreneurs, HNIs and family offices from across the globe.
The fund is backed by Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Accel and entrepreneurs & family offices such as Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Vikram Kailas, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, among others, as well as senior leaders from IBM, Facebook and Google.
“We are delighted to have the continued support from BII. 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, pi Ventures.
Areas of focus
The fund will invest in start-ups focused on disruptive AI and other forms of deep tech across sectors including blockchain, spacetech, biotech and material science, among others.
pi Ventures will continue to focus on early-stage (seed/ pre-Series A/Series A) investments via this fund and so far has invested in five start-ups. It plans to invest in 20-25 such start-ups in the coming two to three years.
Established in 2016 by Manish Singhal, pi Ventures closed its Fund I of ₹225 crore in 2018. The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a base target corpus of ₹565 crore and including green shoe a target of ₹750 crore.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.