Equirus InnovateX Fund, Equirus Group’s early-stage venture arm, has closed its first enterprise technology fund at Rs 166 crore, the firm declared Monday.
The fund, which announced its first close in February 2024, invests in seed and pre-Series A startups building in deep tech, software-as-a-service and fintech. It typically backs companies that are post-product and working toward product-market fit.
The final close drew both domestic and global investors, including Girish Gaitonde, founder and board member of Xoriant; M.R. Jyothy, chairperson and managing director of Jyothy Labs; Dhimant Bhayani, founder and chief executive officer of iRevo; Raj P., founder and executive chairman of Zaggle; Shankar Vailaya, former director and co-founder of Sharekhan; and Nitin Seth, vice chairman of GD Foods.
The fund is led by Krishna Jha, Sunder Nookala and Sadhika Agarwal.
“At the seed and pre-series A stage, capital alone is not the differentiator – context and conviction are,” Sunder Nookala, Partner at Equirus InnovateX Fund, declared. “Having built and backed companies ourselves, we understand the inflection points founders face around product-market fit, enterprise access and organisational build-out. With Fund I fully closed, our commitment is to work closely with portfolio companies to assist them scale responsibly, strengthen fundamentals and build institutions that stand the test of time.”
The fund has deployed more than one-third of its corpus across seven startups and is tarreceiveing a portfolio of up to 15 companies. Its investments include Pointo, Datazip, GreenStitch, CtrlB, Consuma AI, RSPL and NeverInstall. The remaining capital is expected to be deployed over the next 12 to 18 months.
“As India’s startup ecosystem matures, we are seeing a new generation of audacious founders solving structurally complex problems,” Krishna Jha, Partner at Equirus InnovateX Fund, declared. “As a firm of ex-operators, our focus is on partnering with these founders as they walk the long road from early idea to finishuring, category-defining company.”
Equirus InnovateX Fund is a SEBI-registered Category I alternative investment fund. It emphasises governance and long-term value creation, and provides support to founders in enterprise access, regulatory navigation, senior hiring and capital-raising preparedness.
Equirus Group offers investment banking, institutional securities, wealth and asset management, high-net-worth broking, non-banking financial company and insurance services. The firm declared it has completed over 330 transactions across M&A, private equity, IPOs, qualified institutional placements, rights issues and structured finance, raising $15 billion over the past 18 years.
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