pi Ventures, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT-focused early stage venture fund has closed $13 million in funding from prominent investors like Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikchandani and Bhupen Shah among others. Note that the $13m fund is the first tranche of a total $30 million fund, which the company claims to close within a year.
The venture firm was co-founded by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni, and will look to in early stage start-ups that focus on solving problems in healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors using AI, Machines Learning, and IoT. The Bangalore-based VC firm said that it plans to invest in 18-20 start-ups over a 3-4 year time frame.
As of now, pi Ventures has made three investments in the healthcare & energy space:
-It invested an undisclosed amount into SigTuple, a medical diagnostic startup that performs diagnosis using analytics and patient history.
-pi Ventures also invested around $1.18 million in IoT startup Zenatix that looks at conserving energy/electricity using predictive insights and machine learning.
-Ten3T, a startup that makes wearable medical devices for real-time health monitoring had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from pi Ventures in December.
Recent startup funds:
-In January, VC firm Saama Capital raised $57 million in funding as a final close of its third venture capital fund
-In December Jungle Ventures announced the final close of its second fund at $100 million, while Accel Partners raised $450 million for its 5th India fund.
Apart from this, last year, multiple firms launched funds which would be used for internet, technology, electronics and IoT:
-YourNest launched a $45 million fund startups in technology, Ideaspring Capital launched a $18.7 million fund/
-Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital (EVC) announced a $50 million fund for Indian startups.
-IDG Ventures India launched an India-focused tech fund with a target amount of $200 million.
-Nokia Growth Partners announced a new $350 million fund to invest in IoT companies in the US, Europe, India and China.
