Early-stage fund pi Ventures raises Rs 22 crore from Belgium-based Colruyt

Early-stage venture capital fund, pi Ventures said it has raised Rs 22 crore ($2.7 million) from Colruyt Group India. Colruyt Group India is an engineering arm of Colruyt Group, a Belgium-based retail corporation. In India, it operates an information technology and consulting related practice.

The fundraise at pi Ventures, a firm focussed on artificial intelligence (AI) and deeptech startups, has helped it nearly hit its final close in the range of Rs 675 crore to Rs 750 crore, founding partner Manish Singhal told ET.

Pi Ventures had announced its first close of Rs 303.5 crore ($40 million) in January 2022, with funds coming in from venture capital firm Accel, entrepreneurs, high net worth individuals and family offices. The second fund was launched in March 2021 with a base target corpus of Rs 675 crore ( including a green shoe target of Rs 750 crore.

The fund has since then received capital from investors such as BII and Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF. Entrepreneurs and family offices backing the fund include Flipkart founder Binny Bansal, Mamaearth founder Varun Alagh, Info Edge CEO Hitesh Oberoi and MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra.

From its second fund, pi Ventures has so far committed capital in seven startups – ImmunitoAI, Ottonomy.IO, Silence Laboratories, Preimage and three other ventures. It aims to invest in 20-25 more such startups by 2026.

“Despite a lot of ups and downs in the market, deeptech has continued to remain strong… It is a very steady sector. In all these upheavals of valuations, nothing much has changed for the sector..,” Singhal told ET.

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On how the limited partners and sponsors are looking at the sector, Singhal added, “while there are no concerns (from the limited partners) on the seed stage deals, once a company scales to the Series B and C level, discussions on funding are taking longer to conclude, so companies need to plan accordingly.”The fund will continue to focus on AI and other forms of deeptech across sectors including blockchain, space-tech, biotech and material sciences, targeting early-stage deals.

Founded in 2016 by Singhal, pi Ventures closed its Fund I of Rs 225 crore ($30 million) in 2018. The first fund exceeded its target and was oversubscribed and had backed 15 deeptech startups including breast cancer screening solution Niramai, codeless AI infrastructure for growth marketing Pixis, mental health services chatbot Wysa, and space tech startup, Agnikul.

“Our association with Pi ventures is most opportune as we strongly believe in the digital possibilities where we ourselves are the biggest consumer of tech,” Hari Subramanian, managing director, Colruyt Group India and partner, Korys Investments India, added.