Funds managed
| Fund name | Asset Class | License |
| Bharat Innovation Fund | Early stage | AIF Cat 1 |
| Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund | Seed | AIF Cat 1 |
Other licenses could be PMS
About the AMC
- Through our early-stage capital, unparalleled networks, strategic insights and operational hand-holding, we can significantly de-risk the process of conversion of these ideas into companies of consequence.
- We are built upon a decade of early investing and startup support experience at CIIE and our founding team – with seed support from Tata Trusts.
- We are a part of CIIE’s innovation continuum and operate as an autonomous and focused initiative – guided by our Board and Investment Team. We are neither controlled by the Government of India nor by IIM Ahmedabad and have no political affiliations.
- Kunal conceptualized and leads the Bharat Fund platform to build companies of consequence from India across two themes of IP-driven innovation and digital-tech led inclusion.
Investment Philosophy (for firm)
We realize the need for patience, proverbial valley-of-death financing, market development support and access to networks for building deep-innovation driven ventures.
We invest early in the life of a company at seed or Series A stage and remain deeply engaged throughout the lifetime of the company.
We believe that the best and brightest can use technology to solve some of India’s hardest challenges. We realize the need for patient & sustained financial support, strategic & tactical Guidance and access to networks in building companies of consequence.
Media
Title: IIM-A’s deep-tech focused Bharat Innovation Fund makes first close of $100 million fund, Source: Economic times, Date: 19 July 2018
Mumbai: It’s not just pure play venture capital firms that are making a beeline for India’s internet ecosystem.
Early stage deep-tech and intellectual property (IP) focused venture firm Bharat Innovation Fund (BIF) which is affiliated with the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad has made the first close of its $100 million fund today.
The early stage deep tech fund has achieved the first close of the fund at approximately $50 million having secured commitments from institutional investors including corporates, banks, insurers, and fund of funds.
Some of the early investors in the fund include SIDBI which has invested in BIF through its Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) program along with ICICI Lombard, Philips, Bajaj Electricals, RBL Bank amongst others.
“Indian entrepreneurs are producing globally-competitive IP-driven innovations across themes like healthcare/biotech, agriculture, energy, and enterprise-tech – enabled by cutting-edge research and trends like AI, ML, IoT, India Stack, among others. Bharat Innovation Fund will catalyze these transformational deep-tech startups by providing them capital, access to market, strategic inputs and partnership connects,” said Kunal Upadhyay, Managing Partner of Bharat Innovation Fund.
The fund which will look to invest in technology focused startups at the pre-series A and Series A stages will also enable access to global networks, strategic insights, distribution channels, research infrastructure and deep sectoral understanding. Some of the sectors in focus for the fund will include fintech, agriculture and renewable energy amongst others. The BIF team includes Upadhyay and Shyam Menon, co-founders of Infuse Ventures, Ashwin Raguraman, formerly COO of India Innovation Fund, Sanjay Jain, formerly Product Manager at Google and Chief Product Manager at UIDAI and Som Pal Choudhury, formerly Managing Director of Analog Devices, India. Through its unique investors and team, Bharat Innovation Fund hopes to significantly de-risk the process of conversion of early-stage startups into competitive companies of consequence.
Bharat Innovation Fund is built on a decade long startup engagement experience of CIIE, which has seeded over 200 startups across its various programs.
Title: Interview of Ashwin Raguraman (Founding Partner – Bharat Innovation Fund), Source: Startup lanes, Date: 31 January 2020
Ashwin Raguraman is the Founding Partner at Bharat Innovation Fund. He had a very non-linear path into startup investing. But now that he has been doing it for a while, he hooked to it. Interacting with good entrepreneurs is quite heady for him now.
What is your investing philosophy?
There’s a quote by Wayne Gretzky (leading ice-hockey player) that I love.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been. I have realized that this defines my investing philosophy well and fits well into the mandate of our fund, which is to invest in disruptive technology startups.
What has been the most important investing lesson you have learned so far?
I’ve learned a few lessons along the way. In early-stage investing is that there is not a lot of information and data that can be used to make an investment decision. The key is to understand the core of the problem, and the proposed solution and determine if it will be a game changer. To do this it’s important to trust your instinct. It’s also important to ask how complex the problem being solved is, and whether the team sitting in front of you has the legs to execute
I’ve also realized that the startups which take the least time and effort to manage are the ones that provide the best returns.
In evaluating a deal the best entrepreneurs are those who have unparalleled knowledge of the intricacies of space they are trying to address.
Which has been your best investment till date?
Sedemac Mechatronics, a company that builds powertrain solutions for small engines and improves its fuel efficiency. Their products are now in over 18 million two-wheelers and approx. 270,000 diesel generator sets. I invested very early when they were very small and barely had a paying customer.
Can you share any investing mistakes that you made and the lessons we can learn from it?
If you decide to make an investment you must back it well and the funds I have been a part of have been guilty in not doing this well. Until you say ‘yes’, evaluate it, put in the hard effort on diligence, but if you decide to invest, back it well.
The other mistake I’ve made is to have some clear negative signals, especially on founder team chemistry and then ignore it. Startups fail for many reasons and you can never always get it right with risk capital. However, ignoring clear signals telling you not to invest is sacrilegious
Is there any particular investor or author who has had a significant influence on your investment thinking?
Not authors necessarily, but a couple of investors and partners at VC firms that I’ve co-invested with. Their ability to influence founders, the way they support the entrepreneurs, freedom they provide and back their portfolio companies.
What would be your advice to Entrepreneurs seeking funds?
Do you really want VC capital? Answer this question before you go out to raise money because the capital comes with strings attached
Once you decided you want to raise money from VCs, find the right investors, and focus on the chemistry with them as your key decision point
While fundraising, there is attrition if the efforts prolong and therefore the time you’re fundraising well.
Do you invest in specific sectors? If yes, then which are the sectors?
Yes, specifically early and deep tech startups, fairly startup agnostic. Broad areas include Enterprise tech, healthcare, fintech media tech, etc. in emerging technology areas like AI, AR/VR
What is your outlook for the present startup ecosystem in India?
Extremely positive. For the last 12 years I have seen:
- The number of high-quality startups is increasing. The top talent which used to aspire for jobs in Information Tech in the 80s and 90s is gravitating towards entrepreneurship.
- Earlier many startups were not addressing global problems and unable to compete with their global peers. Now early-stage startups are targeting many more markets outside India.
- The number of Unicorns and Soonicorns is increasing. Earlier scalability used to be a question but now they are demonstrating their capability to scale
According to you what is more important (Team, Idea, Traction, etc.)?
When I evaluate an investment opportunity, I focus on three vectors:
- Team: which includes quality, experience, dynamic, compliment.
- Technology, Product or solution
- Market: includes whether it is ready, big enough, and easy to reach.
Different startups are at different points on each of these vectors.
Sometimes the team scores well; the product has less potential or sometimes it’s vice-a-versa.
I evaluate how these three come together to assess the overall opportunity and risk, to see whether the startup is investable.
According to you what is the perfect time for a startup to raise funds?
It really depends on many factors, but the common aspect around rounds is when there is momentum. Investors like to see momentum. On product development, product validation, customer acquisition, revenue scale-up, team augmentation, etc. – based on the stage of the company, any or all of the above.
What is the value add that a founder gets, along with your investment?
I honestly believe that the best founders are those who need the least support. Having said that, we, as most funds do provide strong support in the areas of market access and follow on fundraising. However, I believe where we add the greatest value is to be a sounding board to startups.
Would you like to share any of your recent investments and why did you select them?
About a year back, we invested in Entropik Technologies. They use AI applied to brainwave mapping and facial coding to provide a granular view into a customer’s emotional and non-emotional responses to any form of digital media, including video. How happy are they, how angry, how attentive and so on. We liked the fact that it was cutting edge, futuristic and went to the core of a human being’s emotional state through the use of deep technology. They had also demonstrated early validation of the technology and I saw a high-quality execution capability in the team.
The second was Detect Technologies. They have a patented IoT product used by oil and gas companies to monitor their pipelines. They identify corrosion in gas pipelines and are the only product in the world that works at high temperatures. Postgraduates from IIT Madras, they are a clever team of young guys. It is a globally cutting-edge technology solving a large, expensive problem. We also saw early customer response to the team and how they were able to overcome challenges.
Title: CIIE’s Bharat Innovation Fund Gets SEBI Nod to Operate as Venture Capital Fund, Source: inc42, Date: 13 February 2017
Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has given approval to Bharat Innovation Fund to operate as a Venture Capital Fund. The company has secured Category – I Venture Capital Fund status from SEBI, to run their business. According to the norms, Category-I funds also get incentives from the government and regulators.
Created by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), Bharat Innovation Fund invests at the seed or Series A stage which includes grants and venture capital. The fund was founded to support and encourage entrepreneurs in the emerging sectors such as agriculture, health, energy as well as enterprises. They also support corporates adopting digital technologies, especially technologies related to manufacturing and design.
In August 2016, it invested an undisclosed amount in two healthtech startups MobiDent (owned and IoT-based healthcare startup Zeolr.
The fund will continue to focus on healthcare and life-sciences, which includes biotech, medical devices energy, agriculture, environment, and water.
SEBI, which regulates market capital in India in 2014, had released a consultation paper that proposed legal, structural and regulatory framework around crowdfunding in India. In January 2015, SEBI held talks with the government to evolve guidelines on crowdfunding in a move to help startups raise funds.
Following that in June 2016, it reworked its plans for a capital-raising platforms targeted exclusively at startups. The regulatory body has considered changes to the listing framework for tech-based startups allowed them to trade publicly on regular stock exchanges.
In September 2016, it was reported that SEBI had issued an investor warning notice to equity crowdfunding platforms that aid startups. The notice questioned the legality of these platforms.
Bharat Innovation gets Sebi nod to operate as VC fund, business-standard, February 10, 2017
IIM Ahmedabad-backed Bharat Innovation Fund has received market regulator Sebi’s approval to operate as a venture capital fund.
The Bharat Fund is a public-private-academia partnership set up by IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) that helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into viable businesses.
The objective of the fund is to support and provide funding (grants, seed capital, venture capital) and business support to innovation-driven start-ups that solve real problems faced by the masses through technology-enabled and rapidly scalable solutions.
It would focus on healthcare and life-sciences (including biotech, medical devices), sustainability (energy, agriculture, environment, water) and digital technologies (especially in manufacturing, design).
As per the latest update about registered Alternative Investment Funds with Sebi, Bharat Innovation Fund has secured the regulator’s go-ahead to run business as category-I venture capital fund.
Under the norms, category-I funds get incentives from the government and regulators.
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) had committed to invest Rs 50 crore in the fund over the next three years to help startup India initiative.
Earlier in September 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his US visit had announced the launch of the fund at the ‘Startup Konnect’ event in California.
Title: Entropik Tech raises $1.1mn for EmotionAI from Bharat Innovation, Parampara Capital, Source: exchange4media, Date: 27 July 2018
Entropik Tech, an emotion recognition start-up, raised $1.1mn from Bharat Innovation Fund and Parampara Capital, Arthavida Ventures and Jitendra Gupta (MD, PayU) along with existing investors, who also participated in the round.
The investments will help Entropik Tech scale their platform Affect Lab2.0, launch more IP based products and increase global footprint.
Based out of Bangalore, Entropik Tech is a 20 member team that relies on over 150 years of collective experience to build EmotionAI based products and technologies. It has filed multiple patents since its inception and recently achieved a 100 per cent revenue growth in the previous quarter.
Part of ‘Viacom18 VStEP’ program, ‘Accenture Ventures Cohort’, ‘SAP’& ‘Plug And Play’ accelerator programs, the tech start-up is also the first company in the $100mn Bharat Innovation Fund’s portfolio.
Ranjan Kumar, Founder & CEO, Entropik Tech said, “We live in an era of digital clutter, where almost 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute on a single platform like YouTube. On the other hand, talking about human attention span, we can merely clock 12 to 8 seconds of attention, even lesser than a Goldfish! So be it short format content like ads and trailers or the long format content like movies and TV series, only content that strikes an emotional resonance captures the consumer mindshare.”
Developed to decode consumer emotions, Affect Lab 2.0 enables brands and publishers to understand how consumers feel about their ads, trailers and promos by measuring their subconscious responses. Brands can also benchmark their content against competition.
Entropik Tech is already associated with more than 50 Consumer brands, Digital Agencies & Media Houses like Viacom18, TAM Media Research, Group M, Myntra, ITC, Xiaomi, Born group, Star TV, Sony Motion Pictures &Yash Raj group among others.
Speaking of effectiveness, Kumar says, “We also help brands optimize their content and with our recommendations, they have been able to trigger a jump as high as 4x views per dollar spent. For TV promos, we also predict the likely viewership conversion using ‘Emotional Efficacy’ of content, thus empowering publishers to invest on the winners to reap best marketing ROI.”
Ashwin Raguraman, Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund said, “Entropik Tech’s AI techniques to interpret emotional states and responses from brainwaves is path breaking and has a wide range of uses ranging from understanding consumer preferences to improving mental health. The possibilities are exciting and we look forward to supporting Entropik in maximizing the potential of this disruptive technology.”
Jatin Desai, General Partner, Parampara Capital, said, “We are very excited to be part of Entropik’s journey as Ranjan and his team have built world class products in Emotion-AI using deep tech with multiple use cases across various verticals. Their products have relevance both in India and for global markets and it’s a perfect fit for IDFC-Parampara Fund’s investment theme.”
“It’s extremely gratifying to have over 50 clients spread across media and advertising, FMCG, retail and market research industries, use our platform to know more about their consumers and optimize their ads, trailers, products and User Experience ( UX ). I am very excited about the disruptive potential EmotionAI has towards solving real business problems. There is a lot to be done,” concluded Kumar.
Title: Deep-Tech Focused Bharat Innovation Fund Announces First Close of its $100M Fund, Source: Dqindia, Date: 31 July 2018
https://www.dqindia.com/deep-tech-focussed-bharat-innovation-fund-announces-first-close-100m-fund/
Bharat Innovation Fund, an early stage deep-tech and IP focused venture fund, affiliated with the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, announced its first close recently. The pre-Series-A and Series-A focused $100M fund has secured around 50% commitments from marquee institutional investors. The investors in the fund are corporates, banks, insurers, and fund of funds – including SIDBI through its Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS) program, ICICI Lombard, Philips, Bajaj Electricals Ltd., RBL Bank, among others. Bharat Innovation Fund is built on a decade long startup engagement experience of CIIE, which has been a pioneer of accelerator programs and seed-funds in India since 2008 – and with support from Tata Trusts. CIIE has seeded over 200 startups across its various programs like iAccelerator, Power of Ideas, Powerstart, India Innovation Growth Program, Startup Oasis, among others.
Some ventures supported by CIIE through its various initiatives in the past include Ridlr, Recruiterbox, Forus Healthcare, MechMocha, Tookitaki, and Razorpay. In 2013, CIIE had launched India’s first cleantech focused venture fund – Infuse Ventures – which has backed startups across the cleantech spectrum. Earlier in the month, Infuse’s portfolio company Fourth Partner Energy raised $70mn investment from global private equity major, TPG Growth’s The Rise Fund. CIIE had last month also announced the first closing of its inclusion focused intervention – Bharat Inclusion Initiative.
Talking about the first close of this new fund, Kunal Upadhyay, Managing Partner of Bharat Innovation Fund; said, “Indian entrepreneurs are producing globally-competitive IP-driven innovations across themes like healthcare/biotech, agriculture, energy, and enterprise-tech – enabled by cutting-edge research and trends like AI, ML, IoT, India Stack, among others. Bharat Innovation Fund will catalyse these transformational deep-tech startups by providing them capital, access to market, strategic inputs and partnership connects. We are delighted to have significant interest from investors who believe in our vision of creating truly radical innovations from India.” Bharat Innovation Fund is a unique investment platform that in addition to capital also brings together global networks, strategic insights, distribution channels, research infrastructure, and deep sectoral understanding of its investors and team.
The Bharat Innovation Fund team has a diverse background and come with years of experience in venture investing, incubating, building massively-scalable tech products, and leading corporates and startups. The partners of the Fund include Kunal Upadhyay and Shyam Menon (who were co-founders of Infuse Ventures), Ashwin Raguraman (who was COO of India Innovation Fund), Sanjay Jain (former Product Manager at Google and Chief Product Manager at UIDAI), and Som Pal Choudhury (former Managing Director of Analog Devices, India). Through its unique investors and team, Bharat Innovation Fund hopes to significantly de-risk the process of conversion of these early stage startups into competitive companies of consequence.
Commenting on Bharat Innovation Fund’s first close, M K Raveesha, CGM, SIDBI said, “SIDBI and FFS (DIPP) are delighted to partner with the Bharat Innovation Fund to support deep-innovation driven startups. Bharat Innovation Fund is a unique partnership comprising of strategic and financial investors – and a strong experienced team. We hope to together create breakthrough and globally competitive solutions from India”. RBL Bank’s Executive Director, Rajeev Ahuja said, “We are pleased to partner with Bharat Innovation Fund and support startups across fin-tech, agriculture, renewable energy and other emerging sectors. We are excited to be able to provide strategic inputs and ideas, access to capital and cutting-edge technology solutions to the entrepreneurs — and help them build great companies of tomorrow.”
“We saw deep insight and enthusiasm embedded in team Bharat Innovation Fund. We hope to see the fund helping to bring to the fore Indian startups introducing globally competitive innovative solutions and benefit from the resultant value creation”, said S. Gopalakrishnan, Chief Investment Officer, ICICI Lombard.
Title: CreditVidya Raises $3M Led by Bharat Innovation Fund, Source: Inventive, Date: 29 January 2019
https://www.inventiva.co.in/stories/inventiva/creditvidya-raises-3m-led-by-bharat-innovation-fund/
The leader in the alternative credit scoring space in India, CreditVidya, has raised $3 million in a funding round led byBharat Innovation Fund. Ryan Khoury, Navroz D.Udwadia and Rick Gerson (Founding Members of Falcon Edge Capital) also participated in the round.
This is an extension to the last round of funding, which was led by Matrix Partners. It will be used to expand the Company’s deep technology credit underwriting platform. CreditVidya plans to leverage its leadership position in this space to help consumer businesses such as payments, e-commerce, hospitality etc., extend credit to their customers. It will build bespoke scorecards to solve for specific credit needs, such as working capital loans for MSME’s, travel loans, home repairs and improvement and consumer durables.
CreditVidya’s series A funding was led by Kalaari Capital, who also participated in the previous round.
Speaking on the funding, Abhishek Agarwal, CEO and Co-founder of CreditVidya said, “We want to remain at the forefront of using big data and deep tech to help formal lenders to significantly expand the coverage of unsecured, retail and working capital loans. We have now profiled over 13 million customers on our AI underwriting stack, and the results have proved it to be 2X as powerful as traditional bureau scores. By relying on it, lenders are able to approve a significant 15% more applicants, with 33% lower delinquency. We are really excited to have the support of our investors who share our vision.
Commenting on the partnership, Sanjay Jain, Partner at Bharat Innovation Fund added, “We are at the confluence of three trends in India – the rapid adoption of technology in the hands of people, the formalization of the economy and the aspirations of the people to grow faster. Our decision to invest in CreditVidya was driven by its ability to produce the most advanced credit underwriting platform and products in the country, along with a strong alignment with our larger mission of using deep tech innovation to enable financial inclusion.”
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