pi Ventures raises Rs 100 crore from Sidbi’s startup fund

pi Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund, announced on Wednesday that it has secured a commitment of INR 100 crore (approximately $12.2 million) from Small Industries Development Bank of India's equity scheme Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) for its second fund.

The extra investment is roughly 2.5 times what FFS contributed to the initial fund. Only two weeks before to this announcement, the Bengaluru-based company—which specialises in funding deep tech and artificial intelligence (AI) ventures—raised INR 22 crore from Belgium's Colruyt Group for the same fund, as per reported by The Economic Times.

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Manish Singhal, pi Ventures' partner, said the fund's corpus is nearing to its ultimate close in the range of INR 675 crore to INR 750 crore with the new injection.

Pi Ventures closed its first fund at INR 303.5 crore ($40 million) in January 2022 with commitments from Accel, high-net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, and family offices. In March 2021, the second fund was created with an INR 750 crore target corpus.

Since then, BII, Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF, and others have invested in the fund. The fund is sponsored by famous entrepreneurs and family offices like Flipkart founder Binny Bansal, Mamaearth founder Varun Alagh, Info Edge CEO Hitesh Oberoi, and MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra.

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This fund will target on seed, pre-Series A, and Series A investments, according to pi Ventures. The fund will also prioritise AI and other deep tech investments in blockchain, space tech, biotech, and material sciences.

pi Ventures has invested in seven firms from its second fund, including ImmunitoAI, Ottonomy.IO, Quiet Labs, Preimage, and three more. This fund will fund 20-25 businesses by 2026.

About pi Ventures

pi Ventures is an early stage venture fund based out of India. The fund will focus on backing product & technology companies in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Intelligence & IoT.

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