Ideaspring Capital, an early- stage venture fund by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, announced its official launch in Bengaluru on April 25.

The Rs. 125-crore fund will focus on early-stage product innovation start-ups in the country in key areas, including machine learning & deep learning, computer vision & image processing, big data analytics, Internet of Things, augmented & virtual reality, HealthTech, FinTech, amongst others.

Start-ups will receive up to Rs. 3 crore seed funding and subsequent co-investment at Series A stage of up to Rs. 5 crore. Investors and entrepreneurs, including Naganand Doraswamy, Mohandas Pai, Arihant Patni, Amit Patni, Prashant Deshpande and Rajiv Mody, lead the fund.

Through its ‘Startup Assist’ programme, Ideaspring Capital will help start-ups build scale in product management, customer management, and building products for a global footprint.

Key interventions will be provided in aspects that include Business Market fit, product management, customer connects, and connect to next level of investors. Ideaspring plans to invest in only 4-6 start-ups a year, with entrepreneurs who have deep technical and domain expertise, developing early stage enterprise products in major cities across India.

Intellectual property in the form of algorithms and deep technology will be a key differentiator. Ideaspring Capital has raised majority of its investment from Indian investors with Aarin Capital as the anchor investor.

“We see immense growth potential for enterprise product innovation from India and are confident that India’s next wave of innovation will come from this space. Ideaspring Capital is a coming together of entrepreneurs and investors with rich experience to partner with entrepreneurs who are re-imagining technology to enable a better world,” said Naganand Doraswamy, Managing Director & CEO, Ideaspring Capital.

Start-ups across sectors are attracting early and growth capital. In 2015 alone, the total amount of investment in the start-up ecosystem stood at $5.4 billion according to data from VCCEdge, a financial research platform of VCCircle Network, which highlights the dependence on foreign capital for Indian start-ups.

The Centre is now looking at ways to boost domestic funding to start-ups. Ideaspring Capital is one such venture fund that aims to fuel tech entrepreneurship in the country.

Source: Business Line