IFC is making investments through the ‘IFC Startup Catalyst programme’ which aims to build local ecosystems to drive innovation and entrepreneurship
International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group, has invested US$3 million in pi Ventures, an early-stage VC fund targeting startups in the Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI), Machine Learning and Internet of Things (IoT). Bangalore-based pi Ventures will use the amount to invest in startups operating in these domains.
IFC is making investments through the ‘IFC Startup Catalyst programme’ which aims to build local ecosystems to drive innovation and entrepreneurship. Through the programme, IFC aims to invest in sustainable seed-stage funding mechanisms, including accelerators and seed funds, for supporting early-stage entrepreneurship globally.
“This investment is aligned with IFC’s objective to act as a catalyst to spur entrepreneurial activity and support technology startups that drive innovation in India and globally, and solve complex problems across industries,” said Ruchira Shukla, Regional Lead (Venture Capital- South Asia) at IFC.
Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, said: “Getting IFC to back us in our journey is very meaningful to us. Not only do they bring a wealth of knowledge but also a world-wide network which can be very useful for our investee companies.”
Founded in 2016 by Manish Singhal (Co-founder of LetsVenture) and Umakant Soni, pi Ventures invests in early-stage startups that focus on solving problems in healthcare, logistics, retail, fintech and enterprise sectors using AI, ML and IoT. The VC firm to invest in 18-20 startups from this fund over a period of three to four years.
pi Ventures recently announced the first close of its maiden fund at US $13 million. So far, it has made four investments in the healthcare and energy-efficiency space, namely Sigtuple, Zenatix, Ten3T and NiramAI.
SigTuple is in the medical diagnostic space and is creating a deep learning-driven, cloud-based solution for detection of abnormalities and trends in medical data, for blood diagnosis. Zenatix is a data-driven energy efficiency company that uses advanced machine learning-based models and delivers up to 30 per cent energy efficiency to large commercial consumers of electricity.
Ten3T has developed a solution for continuous monitoring of medical data like ECG in real time through its own smart patches that enable mobile ICUs for smaller hospitals. NiramAI is a startup that’s building a revolutionary non-invasive, non-touch, non-radiation approach to detect breast cancer.
India is IFC’s top country exposure, globally. IFC’s committed portfolio in India is over US$5 billion as of June 30, 2016. In FY16, IFC committed US$1.1 billion in new investments in the country. In addition to strengthening local capital markets in India, IFC is focused on boosting financing in infrastructure and logistics, promoting financial inclusion, helping create conditions to attract increased private capital, and helping structure public-private partnerships.
Image Credit: pi Ventures
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