07 March 2017, India:
An Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT-focused early stage venture fund pi Ventures announced that it has raised $13 million from Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikchandani and Bhupen Shah among others.
The new fund saw participation from the Small Industries Development Bank of India (Sidbi) besides family offices from the USA, Canada, Singapore and India as per the report by ET.
Bangalore-based pi Ventures will focus on backing product & technology companies in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Intelligence & IoT, as it rapidly sees hardware and software products coming together using artificial and machine intelligence to create disruptive ventures across multiple sectors.
“Artificial intelligence and (its applications) have massive potential in very diverse areas like healthcare, supply chain, agriculture, fintech and commerce,“ said Bansal, who along with Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has backed diagnostic startup SigTuple -one of the first startups to raise funding from pi Ventures.
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Mohandas Pai, Partner of Aarin Capital said, “The current technological disruption is being caused globally by automation led by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Industry 4.0 also depends a lot on artificial intelligence and machine learning. pi Ventures is the first Indian fund to focus exclusively on this new area in which India will have a strategic advantage.”
The firm will invest 18-20 startups over the next three to four years. It has made a beginning by backing two healthcare startups – SigTuple and Ten3T – and one in the energy-efficiency space – Zenatix. (Image- LinkedIn)