Speciale Invest Raises Rs 100 Crore for Growth Fund I, Focusing on Deep Science and Enterprise Technologies

• ByStartupStory     |    April 5, 2023

Speciale Invest, a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investments, has achieved the first milestone of raising Rs 100 crore for its Speciale Invest Growth Fund I. The fund’s primary focus is on deep science and enterprise technologies, and it plans to complete its fundraising with a total of Rs 200 crore in 2023. 

According to Vishesh Rajaram, the Managing Partner at Speciale Invest, the fund will invest alongside other investors in select portfolio companies that are seeking additional funding in the Series A-plus stage.

Rajaram, the founder of Speciale Invest, stated, “The LPs are not remarkably different from our other funds but we have a number of large business houses who can help our portfolio companies with know-how.” Additionally, the fund will write cheques of up to $2 million as part of follow-on rounds in Speciale Invest’s existing portfolio of companies, based on metrics such as customer adoption and how the companies are tracking. However, the fund is meant only for the winning companies and will not lead the round or be used for bridge rounds in the companies.

Speciale Invest, which was established by Vishesh Rajaram and Arjun Rao in 2017, launched its first fund worth Rs 60 crore in 2018, with an average deal size of $500,000. Since then, the firm has achieved five early exits. In April 2022, the company announced its second fund, Fund II, which is valued at Rs 286 crore. As of now, nearly 25% of the fund has been deployed, with the goal of supporting 20 to 22 startups in the pre-seed and seed stages. 

“The Growth Fund will invest in enterprise technology companies working in the field of AI, cloud, data, security and expanding the enterprise use case,” said Arjun Rao, General Partner at Speciale Invest. 

Speciale Invest has provided financial support to several innovative technology startups, such as Ultraviolette Automotive Pvt Ltd, Agnikul Cosmos, The ePlane Company, and CynLr. The investment firm concentrates on emerging areas of technology, including space technology, green hydrogen, robotics, batteries, quantum technology, AI-based Software-as-a-Service, development tools, data infrastructure, and applications that employ large language models.

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