pi Ventures closes Fund II at $85 Mn

Early stage venture fund pi Ventures has announced the final close of its second fund with a total commitment of Rs 702 crore or $85 million.

The fund will focus on startups in the field of AI and deeptech categories across sectors such as spacetech, biotech, blockchain, and material science, among others.

The second fund is backed by British International Investments (BII), Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Accel, Premji Invest, and Colruyt, along with entrepreneurs such as Binny Bansal, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Varun Alagh, Anupam Mittal, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, and Deep Kalra. Senior leaders from IBM, Facebook, and Google also infused money pi Ventures’ second fund.

Established in 2016 by Manish Singhal, pi Ventures closed its Fund I worth Rs 225 crores ($30 million) in 2018. The first fund has backed 15 deep tech startups including Niramai, Pixis, Wysa, Agnikul, Locus to name a few. The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a target corpus of Rs 675 crores ($90 million) and including green shoe option of Rs 750 crore ($100 million).

According to the fund, it will continue to focus on seed to Series A investment rounds. It has already invested in seven startups, including ImmunitoAI, Ottonomy.IO, Silence Laboratories, Preimage, and Zero Cow Factory. 

In April this year, pi Ventures received a commitment of Rs 100 crore or 15% of the corpus from Fund of Funds for Startups managed by SIDBI.