Early-stage venture fund pi Ventures, which invests in disruptive Artificial Intelligence and DeepTech startups, has launched its second fund with a target corpus of Rs 565 crore and a greenshoe option of Rs 185 crore.

The VC is looking to back around 25 global disruptors from India with this fund and has received approvals from Sebi.

With Fund II, pi will continue to focus on early-stage (seed/ pre-Series A/Series A) investments in startups focused on disruptive AI as well as ventures going beyond digital deep tech into - space technologies, material science, Biotech and life sciences, the firm said. With Fund 1, so far pi has invested in 13 category-defining deep tech startups like Niramai, Locus, Wysa, Agnikul and Pyxis.

pi Ventures closed its Fund I of Rs 225 cr in 2017-18. Its investors include CDC UK, IFC World Bank, SIDBI, Hero Enterprise’s Sunil Kant Munjal, Electronic Development Fund (managed by Canbank Ventures), Canada’s In Colour Capital, Accel Partners and family offices and entrepreneur investors Binny Bansal, Bhupen Shah, Raghuveer Tarra, Ullas Kamath among others.

Manish Singhal, co-founder and Managing Partner at pi Ventures said, “We are very excited to launch our second fund and continue our mission to back startups which are creating global solutions from India. With AI and other technologies steadily maturing, we can expect some interesting applications in the coming days. With this fund, we aim to support talented entrepreneurs who are creating disruptive products that are solving big fundamental problems, with unique solutions on the back of technology innovations. So far our investment strategy has worked extremely well and we have a healthy portfolio of companies that have scaled massively despite the current pandemic situation. Over the last two years, we have built a strong team that has delivered outstanding performance thereby strengthening our vision of helping make India a ‘DeepTech’ nation.”

With the pandemic giving massive acceleration to AI adoption, AI is shifting gears and will disrupt existing business models. pi Ventures’s latest fund aims to continue to back such disruptive tech ventures that are set out to create 10x differentiated businesses, the firm said.

First Published:Apr 27, 2021 1:17 PM IST