The fund has a target corpus of $30 million (approximately Rs 200 crore) and will invest in the early stages of an AI-focussed startup.
“We felt it is not a narrow thesis, but a broad thesis. We are taking a bet on a technology that is across different sectors,” said Singhal, founding partner, pi Ventures. Singhal was previously cofounder of LetsVenture, an online deal-making platform. He has also invested in startups such as logistics optimisation platform Locus, among others. Soni was at Science Inc, a startup incubator.
The fund has raised money from Bhupen Shah, ex-cofounder of Sling Media, who has invested in seed-stage venture funds, including Tandem Capital, Saama Capital and Jungle Ventures; Sanjeev Bhikhchandani, founder of Info Edge, which owns websites like Naukri.com and Deep Kalra, founder, MakeMyTrip, among others.
“It has not been easy (raising funds). Being a focussed fund helped us. Some of our angel investments helped us. They helped convince investors that they are betting on the right technology . We both have built startups and products. It helps us in recognising products much earlier,” Singhal said. They are in the process of raising money from government funds and international funds.
The fund has already made its first investment in real-time cardiac monitoring device-maker ten3T.
“They actually took one of the units to demo it themselves. They have a hands-on way to evaluate what the company does. They even accompanied us to see how easily nurses can use our product,” said Dr Sudhir Borgonha, co-founder, ten3T. Two more investments are in the pipeline.
“What kind of data are you tap ping in… then, we try to break that down what is the cost of acquiring that data, defensibility of that data, long-term value of that data… the ‘dark’ data that you are un covering, we try and put a business PAUL GAUGUIN, Apples in Bowl value to it.”
Since AI is evolving, pi Ventures has created a tech council, through which it can reach out to the academia and technology leaders. “It is like a technology advisory board for us. It helps us keep abreast of the academia push,” said Singhal.
pi Ventures is also doing its bit to improve the AI ecosystem by organising open house #chAI sessions, wherein startup founders explain how they used AI to solve problems.
“There is a strong word-of-mouth. We want to keep it (#chAI) growing. There is a cross pollination of ideas,” said Soni.
The fund has so far organised five such sessions.
“I think building an AI community in India is a great idea and I saw a very interested bunch of researchers from universities, startups and companies, all out there. It was a very receptive community,” said Viral Shah, co-creator of open source language Julia and coauthor of ‘Rebooting India’, who took one such session.
Source: Economic Times