India's high-profile technocrats and investors including T V Mohandas Pai, Rajiv Mody, Naganand Doraswamy (CEO - TiE-Bangalore) as well as descendents of notable Patni family - Amit and Arihant Patni, have joined hands to form a Rs 125-crore fund, Ideaspring Capital, to back product startups in the country.
The venture fund will invest in early-stage product innovation startups, seed funding of up to Rs 3 crore and subsequent co-investment at series A stage of up to Rs 5 crore, a statement said.
Ideaspring Capital is planning to invest in only 4-6 startups a year and provide high touch 'Startup Assist' programme, it added.
The fund is backed by entrepreneurs and investors, like Mohandas Pai, Naganand Doraswamy, Prashant Deshpande, Sharad Sharma (Co-founder, iSpirt), Ravi Gururaj, Amit Patni and Arihant Patni amongst others.
Ideaspring Capital has raised majority of its investment from Indian investors with Aarin Capital as anchor investor.
"The fund will work with entrepreneurs having deep technical and domain expertise, developing early stage enterprise products in major cities across India," it said.
Intellectual property in the form of algorithms and deep technology will be a key differentiator.
"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," Doraswamy, Managing Director and CEO of Ideaspring Capital, said.
Key areas the fund will cover include Machine Learning and Deep Learning, Computer Vision and Image Processing, Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Augmented and Virtual Reality, HealthTech, FinTech and other such new-age technology.
Through its 'Startup Assist' programme, Ideaspring Capital will help startups to build scale in product management, customer management and building products for a global footprint.
Ideaspring Capital will provide key interventions in aspects that include Business Market fit, product management, customer connects and connect to next level of investors.
In 2015, the total amount of investment in the startup ecosystem stood at USD 5.4 billion, Ideaspring Capital said citing VCCEdge data.
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