pi Ventures raises $8 mn for 2nd fund from British International Investment

Deep tech-focused early-stage venture fund pi Ventures has raised $8 million led by UK-based development finance institution British International Investment (BII). The investment comes after pi Ventures announced the first closing of its second fund at $40 million early this year.

The fund is backed by Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Accel and entrepreneurs and family offices such as Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Vikram Kailas, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, Deep Kalra, senior leaders from IBM, Facebook and Google among others.

The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a base target corpus of $75 million and including a green shoe target of $100 million.

“There remains a significant funding gap in India for early-stage technology businesses. Our renewed commitment to pi Ventures’ second fund addresses this gap and the start-ups it will back will have disproportionate impact potential,” said Manav Bansal, managing director and head of India at British International Investment.

The firm plans to invest in start-ups focused on disruptive artificial intelligence (AI) and other forms of deep tech across sectors including, but not limited, to blockchain, spacetech, biotech and material science among others.

pi Ventures aims to continue its focus on early stage (seed/ pre-Series A/Series A) investments via this fund and so far has invested in five start-ups: ImmunitoAI, Ottonomy.IO, Silence Laboratories, and Preimage. The fund plans to invest in 20 to 25 such start-ups in the coming two to three years, the firm said in a statement.

Chirantan Patnaik, director, Venture Capital, BII, added, “The fund’s continued focus in investing in AI and deep tech-led business models will help foster technology innovation in key development sectors.”

“We are delighted to have the continued support from BII. The confidence in our team and our investment strategy reinforces our commitment to support talented entrepreneurs who are creating disruptive products that solve fundamental real-world problems with innovative technology-backed solutions,” said Manish Singhal, founding partner at pi Ventures.

Established in 2016 by Singhal, pi Ventures closed its first fund of $30 million in 2018, using which the firm backed 15 deep tech start-ups including Niramai, Pyxis, Wysa, Agnikul, and Locus, among others.