Ex-directors of Infy, STFI to launch seed fund

StartupXseed Ventures LLP, a strategic seed funding company started by former Infosys honchos T V Mohandas Pai, V Balakrishnan and former director of STPI (Bengaluru/Hyderabad) and former chairman of India Semiconductor Association B V Naidu, has launched its first fund.

Christened Aaruha Technology Fund, the fund has raised an initial corpus of Rs 30 crore with the trio as the anchor investors. The company also announced its first investment in ShieldSquare, a Bengaluru-based company which is said to be the only Indian software product company that builds anti-scraping security software that shields consumer portals against stealing of database information by competitions. The quantum of investment was not disclosed.

Pai, Balakrishnan and Naidu also manage few other funds either individually, in group or in partnership with some other investors. "In the seed capital space, there are lots of funds who provide some connect in the ecosystem, but there is none who can connect all the dots and create a full ecosystem. Our role would be to fill this gap," said Balakrishnan, chairman of StartupXseed.

"This (Aaruha) will also be a feeder for some of our other funds like Exfinity-1 which invest in pre-series A stage and Exfinity II which can invest in a slightly later stage. So this will make us a major player in the whole ecosystem," added Bala who is also the chairman of Exfinity Ventures.

StartupXseed is collaborating with the incubators from many major universities in India, and also countries like Korea, Israel, Germany and other countries for partnership. "We are providing capital and playing a larger role in these companies by becoming co-founder of these companies apart from mentoring them."