New Delhi, Dec. 18 -- Speciale Invest, a homegrown venture capital firm that focuses on deeptech startups, is planning to launch its second growth stage-focused investment vehicle, targeting a corpus more than seven times larger than its first such fund.
Founded in 2017 by Vishesh Rajaram and Arjun Rao, the Chennai-based firm is aiming to raise Rs 1,400 crore ($155 million) for Speciale Invest Growth Fund II, which it expects to begin fundraising for over the next year.
Speciale Invest, which closed its third flagship early-stage fund in August after exceeding its initial target, had launched its first growth vehicle to back winners from its debut fund. The first growth fund targeted a corpus of Rs 200 crore, marked its initial close at Rs 100 crore in April 2023, and raised Rs 185 crore from limited partners by FY24.
The second growth stage-focused fund will back deep-technology companies in Series A and later rounds. Unlike its predecessor, investments will not be limited to Speciale Invest's portfolio. The firm will actively invest in high-quality deeptech companies, both outperformers from Speciale Invest's existing funds and new growth-stage deeptech companies.
The fund will back companies that have crossed technical validation and are poised to scale into meaningful, revenue-generating businesses. It plans to back 12-15 deeptech startups.
"Deeptech has never been about chasing short-term cycles," said Vishesh Rajaram, founding partner at Speciale Invest. "It is about building institutions that can compound value over decades-often starting with uncomfortable science risk and long timelines."
The cheque size, too, would be higher. Speciale Invest plans on disbursing at least three times the average cheque of $2 million that it cut in its first growth-stage focused vehicle. The latest vehicle would disburse about $5-8 million per company.
With the new fund, Speciale Invest intends to fill a major gap in India's deeptech ecosystem by providing patient, execution-focused growth capital needed to take proven technologies to commercial scale, it said in a statement.
The VC firm has also appointed former NewQuest Capital (now TPG NewQuest) executive Vijay Jacob as general partner to drive growth-stage investing. An alumnus of IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore, he brings nearly two decades of experience across private equity, venture capital, and public markets, including significant exposure to scaling companies through complex growth phases. Jacob, who was the founding member of NewQuest Capital has led investments, portfolio strategy, and exits across multiple sectors and geographies.
"India has done a fantastic job over the last 10 years in emerging as one of the frontiers of deeptech innovation," said Jacob. "The next challenge is scaling-moving from feasibility to viability. Speciale Invest will extend the work done in the seed stage to the growth stage-now supporting founders and companies as they move from validated technology to commercially scalable, profitable, globally competitive institutions."
The VC firm invests in pre-seed and seed rounds of deep-science and tech companies, with a focus on emerging technology areas such as spacetech, aerospace, green hydrogen, robotics, batteries, quantum-tech, AI-led SaaS, developer tools, data infrastructure, and large language model (LLM) applications and infrastructure.
Its portfolio includes Ultraviolette, Agnikul Cosmos, ePlane Company, Cynlr, Qnu Labs, Galaxeye Space, Uravu Labs, NewTrace, e-TRNL Energy, Wingman, StreamAlive, Airboxr, Trainn, among others.
Speciale Invest raised its first fund of Rs 60 crore in 2018. The vehicle invested in 18 companies with an average deal size of under $0.5 million and scored five early exits. It closed its second fund at Rs 286 crore in April 2022, targeting investments in 20-22 early-stage companies through pre-seed and seed rounds. The average cheque size ranged from $500,000 to $1 million.
In August this year, the firm closed its third flagship fund at Rs 600 crore, more than double the size of its second vehicle, surpassing its initial target of Rs 500 crore. The fund's initial cheque size is expected to be Rs 7-10 crore for around a 10% stake.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.