Speciale Invest announces Rs 200 cr growth fund to support deeptech start-ups

Early-stage venture capital fund Speciale Invest announced the launch of the Speciale Invest Growth Fund I, which has a corpus of Rs 200 crore and an initial investment of Rs 100 crore. The fund, which counts start-ups such as Agnikul Cosmos, GalaxEye, ePlane, etc. in its portfolio, announced that it has received approval from market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India to provide series A and above funding to potential start-ups.  
 
Commenting on this development, Vikram Rajaram, Managing Partner of the company said, “Deep science and enterprise technologies have the power to revolutionise industries and solve some of the world's most pressing problems. Our newly launched Growth Fund I is a testament to our commitment to investing in high-potential technology start-ups, and we look forward to working closely with founders building for the world from India.”
 
Speciale Invest raised its first fund of Rs 60 crore which backed 18 companies in 2018. The average deal was $0.5 million and the fund also scored five exits. In April 2022, the company announced the final close of the second fund worth Rs 300 crore with plans to invest in more than 20 early-stage companies through pre-seed and seed rounds. The average cheque size for this fund ranged from $500k to $1 million.
 
“With an initial investment of INR 100 crore and plans to increase it further in the coming months, we look forward to partnering with promising start-ups and providing them with the resources and guidance they need to achieve their full potential. We see immense opportunities in the start-up ecosystem in India and would continue to empower the young change makers in our capacity,” said Arjun Rao, General Partner at the firm.
 
Speciale Invest, was founded in 2017 by Rajaram and Rao. Some of the emerging technologies it focuses on include spacetech, aerospace, green hydrogen, robotics, batteries, quantum tech, AI led SaaS, data infrastructure, large language model (LLM) applications/infrastructure, among others.

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