IIT Madras Analysis Park (IITMRP), India’s first university-based analysis park, has partnered with DeepTech VC Fund Unicorn India Ventures to launch a Rs 600 crore deeptech fund.

Notably, the fund will even have an extra Rs 400 crore as greenshoe choice.

IITM Analysis Park is house to a number of international R&D labs, Facilities of Excellence (CoE), and Incubators. IITMRP together with the IITM Incubation Cell has performed a pivotal position in translational analysis, commercialisation, and nurturing cutting-edge deeptech startups throughout spacetech, communications, climatetech, EVs, semiconductor, quantum, and defensetech.

To additional strengthen the innovation ecosystem and speed up the expansion journey for the startups, IIT Madras Analysis Park has chosen Unicorn India Ventures because the Fund Supervisor for the deeptech fund.

The fund will look to construct a portfolio of 25+ corporations in IP-led, engineering heavy startups in sectors like robotics, spacetech, deftech, semicon, medtech, and so forth. that align with nationwide strategic pursuits.

With a median first funding measurement of Rs 8-10 crore, the funding technique will observe a twin stage strategy. The fund will probably be used to put money into early-stage deeptech startups which have reached Know-how Readiness Stage (TRL) 3-4 with an intention to establish high-potential improvements to nurture them by way of the preliminary commercialisation hurdles.

The fund will even help them with capital at early mid-stage the place they’ve reached TRL 5–7 to speed up the event of idea confirmed applied sciences.

Part of the corpus could be assigned to pick early late-stage corporations that attain TRL 7–9 with a confirmed product tech and wish help with accelerated scale up and market penetration.

Dr Kamakoti Veezhinathan, Director of IIT Madras and the person behind the Shakti micro-processor, stated, “Science and expertise will play an important position within the development story and in the direction of India turning into Viksit Bharat 2047, specializing in expertise sovereignty, AI, semiconductors, defence-tech and quantum expertise. The necessity of the hour to cut back reliance on expertise imports and strengthen indigenous capabilities. IIT Madras has been in forefront of this wave for over a decade and this Fund is the following logical step for us.”

Natarajan Manjulai, Group CEO of IITM Analysis Park, stated, “India’s deep-tech ecosystem is at a pivotal second, pushed by supportive insurance policies, sustained R&D investments, and powerful entrepreneurial aspiration amongst our youth. This fund will speed up the interpretation of analysis into globally aggressive startups whereas strengthening India’s innovation & entrepreneurship. We’re happy to accomplice with Unicorn India Ventures to advance India’s deep-tech leadership–imagining, designing, and constructing in India for the world.”

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Companion, Unicorn India Ventures, stated, “As an lively deep tech investor, we have now already constructed a portfolio of practically 30 corporations and this new fund in partnership with IITM comes on the proper time as we have now met quite a few progressive startups in final 2 years. India has the expertise, capital and affected person buyers like us and IITM to pool in our collective data, assets and business connections to assist the following era of deep tech founders.”

The fund will deploy 60% of the investable corpus to construct the preliminary portfolio and reserve 40% for follow-on rounds to make sure that there’s sufficient “Affected person Capital” to again winners by way of the “Valley of Demise” phases.

Unicorn India Ventures stated it’s going to use its means to boost cash past the primary fund and create a co-investment setup in order that its portfolio corporations all the time have sufficient capital.

The fund will lead the method of elevating cash from IITM alumni and from its international community of buyers, together with household places of work, extremely excessive web price people, and enormous Indian establishments.