Early stage deep-tech and IP focused Bharat Innovation Fund announced the first close of its ₹690 crore ($100 million) fund. Bharat Innovation Fund is affiliated with the Centre for Innovation, Incubation, and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A).
The fund has marked its first close at approximately ₹345 crores ($50 million) from known institutional investors including corporate, banks, insurers, and fund of funds. This list of investors includes SIDBI through its Fund of Funds for startups (FFS) program, ICICI Lombard, Philips, Bajaj Electricals Ltd, RBL Bank, etc.
Bharat Innovation Fund is an early stage venture fund providing a platform for Indian startups in the field of breakthrough healthcare, agriculture, renewable and advanced technology innovations. It helps the startups to grow from the initial idea phase to companies of consequence by using its networks, strategic insight, and operational capabilities.
“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 capital, access to market, strategic inputs and partnership connects,” said Kunal Upadhyay, Managing Partner of Bharat Innovation Fund.
Bharat Innovation Fund has its genesis in the CIIE at IIM-A but it has grown into an independent fund after receiving SEBI‘s approval last February.
Bharat Innovation Fund has a team of seasoned entrepreneurs and venture capitals including Kunal Upadhyay and Shyam Menon, co-founder of Infuse Ventures, Ashwin Raghuraman, co-founder of India Innovation Fund, among many others.
CIIE was established in 2002 as an academic research center at IIM-A, but its separate infrastructure became functional in 2007. It has since launched various programmes to support startups like iAccelerator, powerstart, Startup Oasis, INVENT, among many others to seed over 200 startups.
It had also launched Infuse Ventures in 2011, India’s first cleantech and sustainability-focused fund.
Some of the popular ventures supported by CIIE’s various initiatives include Ridlr, Recruiterbox, Forus Healthcare, MechMocha, TookiTaki, and Razorpay among others.