Bharat Innovation Fund closes USD 100 mn Fund

Bharat Innovation Fund (BIF), an early stage deep-tech and IP focussed venture fund, today said it has closed its first USD 100 million fund with participation from marquee institutional investors.

"The pre-Series-A and Series-A focussed USD 100 million fund has secured around 50 per cent commitments from marquee institutional investors. The investors in the fund are corporates, banks, insurers, and fund of funds," it said in a statement.

These include the likes of SIDBI through its Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) programme, ICICI Lombard, Philips, Bajaj Electricals Ltd and RBL Bank among others, it added.

Partners of the Fund include Kunal Upadhyay and Shyam Menon (co-founders of Infuse Ventures), Ashwin Raguraman (COO of India Innovation Fund), Sanjay Jain (former Product Manager at Google and Chief Product Manager at UIDAI), and Som Pal Choudhury (former Managing Director of Analog Devices, India).

"Through its unique investors and team, BIF hopes to significantly de-risk the process of conversion of these early-stage startups into competitive companies of consequence," the statement said.

Kunal Upadhyay, Managing Partner of BIF, said Indian entrepreneurs are producing globally-competitive IP-driven innovations across themes like healthcare/biotech, agriculture, energy, and enterprise-tech - enabled by technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things and India Stack among others.

"BIF will catalyse these transformational deep-tech startups by providing them capital, access to market, strategic inputs and partnership connects," he added.