Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures has announced the first closing of its fund II at Rs 300 crore (USD 40 million). The company plans to invest the money in 20-25 startups in the next three years.
The company has launched the fund II in March 2021 with a base target corpus of ₹565 crore (USD 75 million) and a green shoe target of ₹750 crore (USD 100 million). According to Manish Singhal, founding partner at pi Ventures, the firm aims to announce the second close by mid-2022.
The investment for fund II comes from Binny Bansal, and Mamaearth’s Varun Alagh, among others. Senior leaders from Facebook, Google and IBM participated in the round.
The fund has already been deployed to back biotech startup ImmunitoAI. The investment firm plans on deploying funds across 20-25 startups, between seed and Series A rounds to the startups that operate in artificial intelligence (AI). The investment firm will also back firms functioning in blockchain, biotech and material sciences.
pi Ventures focuses on backing deeptech startups in the early stages. Started in 2016, pi Ventures had closed its Fund I of ₹225 crore (USD 30 million) in 2018. The fund was used to invest in 15 startups, including Google-backed mental health platform Wysa, breast cancer screening solution Niramai, spacetech company Agnikul and logistics company Locus.
