8X Ventures’ Post

Transcript

On the show early stage venture capital firm Atex Ventures, they announced their first close of the second deep tech fund. It's going to be an India focused fund. I had about 200 crore rupees. Let's connect with Chirag Gupta, he's joining in as the managing partner. Thank you so much for taking time out. Let's talk a little bit more about the aim of this fund. I understand you're looking at early stage Indian deep tech startups. What's the game plan over the next few years with the fun? So the so the latest one is a 200 crore fund which is focused on deep tech sectors primarily focusing on four areas, first being robotics, second being Industry 4.0, third being biotech and 4th being computing. We are very, very excited about each of these four sectors and the common theme across these four sectors, the technology that they are working on has to be comparable or better than every other alternative. Available across the globe and it should be commercially ready in the span of next two to three years. So there's very specific sectors as well that you will be focusing on, water, sanitation and hygiene, a lot of B2B enterprise SAS businesses across the country. Tell us a little bit more. Then four sectors in first is and each of these sectors have been picked up based on what exactly is the need of the hour in the Indian ecosystem. The first sector is water, sanitation and hygiene. So in the water, sanitation and hygiene, there are a lot of developments that are possible using technology and that has been the big gap in the market. So that's the first sector for us. Second for us is manufacturing sector. In the manufacturing like in government has been putting a lot of push on the manufacturing sector but a lot of innovation is possible using technology. So that is the second sector that we are focusing on. 3rd we are looking at is a biotech sector to see how biology, the technology and biology can use can be used in advancement of human life. And 4th is the computing sector, computing being we're talking about semiconductor cybersecurity because which is aligned with the smart city mission of the of the nation. So what is the goal in terms of your total investment size and how many startups are you looking to invest in in total? So the the the idea is to invest in 18 to 20 startups initially and our initial check size will be two cross 25 crores. And with the following checks in eight to 10 companies and that follow on check will range from 15 cross to 20 cross. So overall investment in the company can go up to 20 or 25 crores and but eventually we start with 18 to 20 companies doubling down on 8 to 10 companies. And you know, you had gone on record as well to talk about how the Indian deep tech system has a lot of better return opportunities as compared to what we see in the US, Europe or even the Middle East. What's the outlook on the space as a whole? So Indian deep tech sector has just started growing up. So theoretically speaking, before 2016, there was no deep tech sector in India and it has grown massively from almost 0 deep tech companies to 3600 deep tech companies in a span of eight years. But still the funding portion going to the tech in India is approximately 3 to 4%. Which is a lot less than what the US gets right now. So in the US investment ecosystem, it's approximately 24% of the investments go into the deep tech sector. In the European ecosystem, it's about 23 to 24% as well. In China, it's about 2021%. India is still is way behind that. However, we are pretty confident that Indian ecosystem is going to catch up soon. There have been many policy advancement which have already come in the last one. Two years and there are multiple policy advancements that are expected in the next one to two years. There's already a draft policy, a deep tech policy in place, which is for one, Black Ops. And all these policies, initiatives by government, by academic institutions, by corporates is we are pretty confident is going to move the needle. So how much of investment has the fund already secured from H and I and what is the outlook for the fund for the space as a whole? So, so far we have secured commitments of 60 crores largely from family offices and H and I both in India and Dubai. We all we also have additional approximately 50 cross of soft commitments from some other family offices in H and I, which we are quite confident we'll be signing up in a matter of next three to five months. Overall, for the remaining capital PR right now speaking to some other family offices in Dubai as well as India and we are fairly confident by this time next year, we should have raised 200 plus cross and we'll be ready to deploy it. So we have already started deploying because we are pretty confident about the fundraise based on our investment pipeline. There has been an active inbound interest as well into this thesis both from domestic investors and. And actually international investors. OK, good to have you on board. Thanks for joining in. If you like this video, then like share and subscribe to 18 now.