Pi Ventures raises $8 million in funding from British International Investment
- ByStartupStory | November 10, 2022
British International Investment, a UK-based provider of development financing, sponsored the $8 million fundraising effort for the deep technology-focused early-stage venture fund pi Ventures. The investment follows pi Ventures‘ early-year announcement of the $40 million initial closing of its second fund. Nippon India Digital Innovation AIF (NIDIA), Accel, as well as businesspeople and family offices like Binny Bansal, Varun Alagh, Samit Shetty, Rajesh Ranavat, Vikram Kailas, Anupam Mittal, Hemendra Kothari, Hitesh Oberoi, Ullas Kamath, and Deep Kalra, among others, are supporting the fund. Other backers include senior executives from IBM, Facebook, Google, and Facebook. With a base target corpus of $75 million and a green shoe target of $100 million, the second fund was introduced in March 2021.For startup technology companies in India, there is still a huge funding shortage. Our continued support of the second fund from pi Ventures fills this need, and the start-ups it will support have the potential to have a disproportionately positive impact, according to Manav Bansal, managing director and head of India at British International Investment.
The company intends to fund startups in a variety of industries, including but not limited to the blockchain, space tech, biotech, and material science, that are focused on disruptive artificial intelligence (AI) and other types of deep technology.Through this fund, pi Ventures hopes to maintain its emphasis on early stage (seed/pre-Series A/Series A) investments. To date, the fund has invested in ImmunitoAI, Ottonomy.IO, Silence Laboratories, and Preimage, among other start-ups. According to a statement from the company, the fund intends to invest in 20 to 25 of these start-ups over the next two to three years.
“The fund’s sustained focus on investing in AI and deep tech-led business models will assist drive technology innovation in important development sectors,” noted Chirantan Patnaik, director of venture capital at BII. “We are grateful for BII’s ongoing assistance. Manish Singhal, a founding partner at pi Ventures, stated that the confidence in our team and investment strategy “reinforces our commitment to help outstanding entrepreneurs who are inventing breakthrough technologies that solve fundamental real-world problems with inventive technology-backed solutions.” Pi Ventures, which Singhal founded in 2016, closed its first $30 million fund in 2018. With this money, the company supported 15 deep tech start-ups, including Niramai, Pyxis, Wysa, Agnikul, and Locus, among others.
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