Venture capital firms such as Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, BoldCap, IvyCap Ventures, and Indian Angel Network, are looking to double down on their investments in artificial intelligence (AI) startups with nearly over Rs 25,000 crore overall fund over the years.
While the broader funds announced by some of the investors is sector agnostic, with a focus on specific areas such as AI for services, AI in vertical software, hyper automation, domain-specific large language models (LLMs), and generative AI, most investors such as Accel and Bessemer, have a dedicated AI fund. “We have a dedicated $1 billion fund for AI investments. Our focus is across categories – enterprises and general usecases,” said Vatsalya Tandon, investor at Bessemer Venture Partners.
Seed-to-Series A investor Bessemer, whose portfolio includes companies like Urban Company, Ola, Pharmeasy, Swiggy, among others, believes that there is a lot of opportunity of building AI software-as-a-service (SaaS) products in India. “We are really strong about a lot of talent availability in India for AI. You would see India as a service economy,” Tandon added. Among Indian AI startups, Bessemer has invested in content marketing platform Pepper Content.
Since AI is an emerging area, a lot of investors are ready to invest in early stage companies, having right solutions, and teamsteams. Besides providing capital, the investors are providing access to a wider global network of advisors to help them drive business. Accel, which through Accel Atoms had invested in six generative AI companies across different vertices last year, is again planning to launch another version of Atoms soon. The venture capital firm has invested close to $500,000 each in the generative AI startups. The company is looking to have another similar incubation support soon to invest and scale AI startups.
“We are going to launch our new Atoms programme soon…We are looking for people (startups) with domain specialists, who can re-think those domains with an AI-native thinking,” said Anagh Prasad, investor at Accel India. “We are scouting for ideas in AI-native services, next generation consumer platforms, social media, e-commerce, education, health and so on,” Prasad added. Joining the list, IvyCap Ventures is also looking at Rs 2,000 crore sector agnostic fund focussed at investing in India.
The investment firm is looking to invest up to Rs 60 crore, with a follow-on investment up to Rs 100 in the new Vintage 2024 fund. “We are a sector agnostic firm. Amid whole focus on disruption and innovation, we are looking at contact centre automation, AI agents for enterprise, applications of AI individualization, etc,” said Harshit Tahiliani, associate investments at IvyCap Ventures.
Indian Angel Network has also earmarked a total of Rs 5,000 crore fund, through which it is looking to focus on 500 startups and create 500,000 jobs by 2030. Being a sector agnostic early-stage investor, the fund is focussing on sectors such as cleantech, fintech, agritech, deeptech, space technology, among others.
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