Bluehill.VC, which focuses on India’s emerging deeptech and frontier-tech ecosystem, has made the final close of its maiden Rs 400-crore ($42 million) fund, including a Rs 50-crore greenshoe option.
The firm, headquartered in Chennai and Bengaluru, said in a media statement that the fund has attracted strong participation from institutional investors, including SIDBI and the governments of Kerala and Uttar Pradesh, alongside leading family offices, accomplished entrepreneurs, and UHNIs from India and the Middle East.
“For the past two decades, venture capital has largely been driven by consumer, software, and Internet businesses,” said Manu Iyer, managing partner and co-founder at Bluehill.VC.
“We believe the next wave of enduring value will be created by companies solving hard engineering and scientific problems. India today has the talent, policy momentum, and entrepreneurial ambition to build globally competitive businesses across defence, semiconductors, space, energy, and advanced manufacturing,” he added.
Deeptech or frontier-tech investments in India are witnessing significant traction, with both investors and the government stepping up efforts to build the country’s technology ecosystem.
“Frontier-tech investing requires a different kind of conviction. These companies take longer to build, demand deeper technical understanding, and solve problems that few others are willing to tackle,” said Sridhar Parthasarathy, Managing Partner & co-founder, Bluehill.VC. “But when they succeed, they create technologies that are difficult to replicate, globally competitive and capable of defining entire industries.”
Just recently, AUM Ventures made the first close of its India Innovation Fund II at Rs 225 crore ($23.6 million) to ramp up investments in the deeptech sector. The firm is understood to be targeting a total corpus of Rs 750 crore.
Among other investors that have raised capital to invest in the sector, Inflexor Ventures made the first close of its third fund, securing commitments totalling $40 million to invest in India’s early-stage startups across science, engineering and technology.
And it’s not investors alone. The Indian government last year approved a Rs 1-lakh-crore ($12 billion) Research, Development, and Innovation Fund-of-Funds (RDI Scheme) to help build a competitive deeptech ecosystem.
The focus on the sector is growing as geopolitical priorities, industrial policy, and advances in science and engineering reshape global innovation. India is seeing a new generation of companies develop technologies with both commercial and strategic applications, prompting investors to increase their focus on deeptech startups.
Bluehill invests in startups from the seed to Series A stages that are developing proprietary technologies across areas including energy, EVs, nuclear, semiconductors, advanced materials, defence, space, water, manufacturing, robotics, industrial technologies and IoT.
The firm plans to build a portfolio of 15-16 companies, investing up to $1-2 million on an average in the first institutional round. It counts Helex and EtherealX, among its portfolio companies.
