JIIF plans to invest Rs 80-100 Cr in early-stage startups

Early-stage investment platform JITO Incubation and Innovation Foundation (JIIF) plans to invest around Rs 80–100 crore in Indian startups over the next 12–18 months. Over the past two years, it has already deployed more than Rs 150 crore across 100+ pre-seed and seed-stage startups.

The foundation aims to back 20–25 startups each year, with typical investment sizes ranging from Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2 crore, depending on the stage and sector.

JIIF has also invested Rs 26.5 crore in Mumbai-based Atomic Capital, marking its entry into a fund-of-funds strategy. This move enables the platform to access a broader range of opportunities beyond direct startup investments.

JIIF said it is planning to launch an accelerator programme focused on the Asia-Pacific region, spanning India, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The programme will support early-stage startups across sectors including artificial intelligence, fintech, climate, mobility, and digital infrastructure.

“We have focused on building a founder-first investment platform that goes beyond capital. Our partnerships with platforms such as Startup Singham and Lead to Unicorn have helped us access high-quality opportunities,” said JIIF Chairman Jeenendra Bhandari.

JIIF’s portfolio is diversified across sectors, including AI and deeptech (15%), consumer and D2C (25%), health (15%), fintech (15–20%), and mobility and sustainability (20%), among others.

Some of its portfolio companies include Aten Porus, Elixia, Zintlr, DTown Robotics, Nautical Wings, BatX, S3V, Stroom, Snackible, Elefant, among others across sectors such as SaaS, defence tech, mobility, sustainability, health tech and D2C.

JIIF has reported over 15 exits in the recent years. The platform claimed that some of the sectors, including consumer, mobility and fintech, have seen relatively quicker exits through secondary transactions and buybacks.

The platform added that most of its exits have occurred via secondary transactions and buybacks, with returns broadly in line with its target internal rate of return (IRR) of over 20–30% over the investment lifecycle.