Piper Serica launches ₹800 crore

The asset manager will look to invest in around 22 companies in its Series A and B rounds, with a target investment of ₹25-40 crore per company, a target gross internal return (IRR) of around 30 per cent and a holding period of six years.

The new fund follows its Category-I Alternative Investment Fund, which is already operational and has a corpus of about ₹273 crore, with 85 per cent of the fund deployed. To date, that fund has invested in 30 companies, including Alt Mobility, SenseSemi, Pantherun, Freed, Coratia Technologies and Six Senses Mobility.

Ajay Modi, director of Piper, said, “For the first time, Indian founders are building IP-based, engineering-first businesses that are not only domestically relevant, but globally competitive. We invest in founders who demonstrate three things: the technical depth to build something truly defensible, the leadership ability to build an organization around it, and the commercial discipline to scale it with unit economics.”

Such dedicated funds for the deep-tech industry are gaining traction as investors are becoming comfortable investing in companies that typically have a long horizon before generating revenues and profitability.

India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA), a consortium of venture capital funds and big corporates like Nvidia and Qualcomm, will invest around $10-15 million in start-ups in the space, semiconductor, artificial intelligence and defense sectors.

Modi said that, out of the corpus, the fund has secured commitments of ₹300 crore from ultra-high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) and Indian family offices. In the first fund, the average investment size was around ₹6-12 crore as initial funding.

Piper Serica is associated with institutes like IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IISc Bengaluru and government innovation platforms including iDEX, IN-SPACe and DRDO. The fund’s advisory board includes former DRDO chairman S Christopher along with experts from the fintech, spacetech, semiconductor and healthcare sectors.