Speciale Invest Raises INR 140 Cr In Second Seed Fund The fund expects to invest in about 18-20 startups building enterprise software products
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Bengaluru-based seed-stage VC Speciale Invest that invests in deep technologies on Friday announced the first closing of its second fund. The second fund exceeded its target and was oversubscribed with the backing of an experienced group of domestic investors.
The fund expects to invest in about 18-20 startups building enterprise software products including SaaS, developers tools, and frontier technologies including spacetech, robotics, photonics, alternative energy to name a few.
Speciale had raised its first fund in 2018 and invested in 14 cutting-edge startups so far, with an average deal size of sub $0.5 million. The investment strategy and portfolio construct continue to remain the same across funds, and a larger corpus allows for more follow-on allocation to the portfolio.
"We are excited to announce the launch of our second fund to support and boost the deep-tech startup ecosystem in India amid the ongoing pandemic. The oversubscribed round of funding and interest in our subsequent round demonstrates the support of our investors in our team in creating a long-standing venture institution. It also reaffirms our commitment towards looking out for entrepreneurs who have unconventional ideas in building futuristic companies that will challenge the status quo and revolutionize the world," said Vishesh Rajaram, managing partner, Speciale Invest.
Founded in 2017 by co-founders Vishesh Rajaram and Arjun Rao, the fund's interests include enterprise software products (emerging from deep tech in Cloud, Voice, and Vision ML/AI, image analytics, AR/VR) and Industrial Hardware Products (emerging from deeptech in propulsion tech, robotics, rocket engines, lithium tech, micro-electronics, optical communication tech).
"We're thrilled that our second fund enables us to continue this journey of partnering with early-stage founders building companies at the bleeding edge of innovation from India. We take the learnings and progress from the 1st Fund portfolio as motivation to double down on our core deep tech thesis and strive harder to explore newer areas of tech and science-led disruption," added Arjun Rao, general partner, Speciale Invest.
Portfolio companies of Speciale Invest include enterprise software companies Wingman, True Lark, TotalCloud, Scapic, iAuro, Pocket52 and; and hardware startups The ePlane Company, Agnikul, Astrogate Labs, CynLr, and Kawa Space.
