Deep-Tech Focussed Bharat Innovation Fund Announces First Close Of Its $100M Fund

BANGALORE, INDIA: Bharat Innovation Fund, an early stage deep-tech, and IP- focused venture fund, affiliated with the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, announced its first close today.

The pre-Series-A and Series-A focussed $100M fund has secured around 50% commitments from marquee institutional investors. The investors in the fund are corporates, banks, insurers, and fund of funds - including SIDBI through its Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) program, ICICI Lombard, Philips, Bajaj Electricals Ltd., RBL Bank, among others.

In addition to capital, Bharat Innovation Fund also brings together global networks, strategic insights, distribution channels, research infrastructure, and deep sectoral understanding of its investors and team.

The Bharat Innovation Fund team has a diverse background and come with years of experience in venture investing, incubating, building massively-scalable tech products, and leading corporates and startups. The partners of the Fund include Kunal Upadhyay and Shyam Menon (who were co-founders of Infuse Ventures), Ashwin Raguraman (who was 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, Bharat Innovation Fund hopes to significantly de-risk the process of conversion of these early-stage startups into competitive companies of consequence.

Kunal Upadhyay, Managing Partner of Bharat Innovation Fund; said, “Indian entrepreneurs are producing globally-competitive IP-driven innovations across themes like healthcare/biotech, agriculture, energy, and enterprise-tech -enabled by cutting-edge research and trends like AI, ML, IoT, India Stack, among others. Bharat Innovation Fund will catalyze these transformational deep-tech startups by providing them with capital, access to the market, strategic inputs and partnership connect.”