Speciale Invest floats Rs 1,400 Cr fund to back deep-tech startups

Deep-tech venture capital firm Speciale Invest has launched a Rs 1,400 crore Growth Fund II to back early-stage startups. The fund aspires to address a critical gap in India’s deeptech funding ecosystem for startups which have moved beyond technology validation, but are yet to build predictable revenues.

The fund will back 12-15 startups with average investments of $5-8 million, to go from the stage where the technology is ready to be implemented, to becoming a commercially sustainable business. For this fund, it expects a more institutional LP base, while early-stage funds will continue to see more family offices.

According to the Chennai-based VC firm, it will continue to focus on sectors such as spacetech, advanced manufacturing, energy storage, quantum computing, health and biosciences, and defence technologies. A significant amount of capital will be placed into areas such as unmanned systems and maritime surveillance.

The firm has also onboarded Vijay Jacob as general partner to lead growth-stage investments. Jacob, a former founding member of NewQuest Capital, stressed that the new fund will focus on backing deeptech firms that have largely mitigated scientific risk and are ready for capacity building and global competition.

Three months back, it closed its Fund III at Rs 600 crore, exceeding its Rs 500 crore target. The fund committed to invest in sovereign technology and globally scalable intellectual property from India. It planned to back 18–20 early-stage deeptech startups in areas such as AI infrastructure, spacetech, climatetech, quantum systems, advanced manufacturing, and dual-use defence, with check size ranging from Rs 7 crore to Rs 10 crore.

In its last three early-stage funds launched between 2017, 2021, and 2025, Speciale backed about 35 startups. The firm’s portfolio includes Agnikul Cosmos, GalaxEye, ePlane Company, Ultraviolette, CynLr, and QNu Labs. The firm has recorded nine M&A exits to date. It aims to increase its average stake in startups to about 15% in Fund III, compared to 5% in Fund I and 10% in Fund II.