Financial services company Equirus Group has announced the final close of its maiden early-stage venture capital (VC) fund, Equirus InnovateX Fund, at ₹166 Cr ($18.3 Mn). The company had floated the early-stage fund in January 2024 with a target corpus of at least ₹207 Cr ($25 Mn).
With the fund, the firm aims to back up to 15 startups operating in sectors like SaaS, deeptech, fintech, among others. It would primarily focus its investments in the B2B space. So far, it has deployed over one-third of the corpus, and has invested in seven startups, namely Pointo, Datazip, GreenStitch, CtrlB, Consuma AI, RSPL and NeverInstall. The remaining capital is expected to be deployed over the next 12-18 months.
As per the firm, the limited partners (LPs) of the fund include Xoriant founder Girish Gaitonde, Jyothy Labs chairperson and MD M R Jyothy, iRevo’s founder Dhimant Bhayani, Zaggle’s founder and executive chairman Raj Narayanam, GD Foods’ vice chairman Nitin Seth, among others.
“With Fund I fully closed, our commitment is to work closely with portfolio companies to help them scale responsibly, strengthen fundamentals and build institutions that stand the test of time,” Sunder Nookala, partner at Equirus InnovateX Fund said.
The development comes at a time when there is an evident rise in deeptech investments since the start of this year. Numerous VC firms have launched funds exclusively to back startups in the deeptech space in the past few months.
In February alone, ValleyNXT Ventures launched its maiden fund with a target corpus of ₹200 Cr (about $22 Mn) to back early-stage deeptech startups, while US-based Golden Sparrow Ventures marked the first close of its $20 Mn (INR 180.8 Cr) Fund II to back early stage deeptech businesses in India.
About a month ago, Navam Capital also marked the final close of Navam Venture Fund I at INR 315 Cr (about $34.3 Mn) to back Indian deeptech startups building for global markets.
Meanwhile, the central government has also been showing its encouragement to boost the deeptech space, where the Cabinet approved a research development and innovation (RDI) scheme with a corpus of ₹1 Lakh Cr to fuel capital in the sunrise sector.
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