Early stage VC fund pi Ventures raises Rs 702 Cr in second fund

Early-stage venture fund Pi Ventures has announced the final closure of its second fund with a total commitment of Rs 702 crore exceeding its target of Rs 565 crore.

The second fund saw participation from multiple institutional players such as BII, Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Accel, Colruyt, and Premji Invest. Besides, entrepreneurs and family offices such as Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, and Deep Kalra, among others.

SIDBI is one of the key backers of pi Ventures as the financial institution also participated in the second fund with a commitment of Rs 100 crore from its Fund of Funds for Startups. This is nearly 2.5 times of what FFS had invested in the first fund.

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The venture capital firm primarily invests in AI and deeptech startups in India. Founded in 2018 by Manish Singhal, it had closed its first fund in 2018 with a corpus of Rs 225 crore.

The second fund of pi Ventures has already invested in seven startups and plans to take this number to 20-25 in the next two-three years.

Manish Singhal, founding partner, pi Ventures, said, “India is a great place to build deeptech companies. We are privileged to have a role to play in the journey to put India on the deeptech map of the world."

In the first fund, pi Ventures backed 15 deeptech startups including the likes of Niramai, Pixis, Wysa, Agnikul and Locus.