Ideaspring Capital: A Rs 125 crore early-stage venture fund targets startups with deep-tech knowledge

Today, at an event held in Bangalore, Patni brothers along with Mohandas Pai, Naganand Doraswamy and Prashant Deshpande announced Ideaspring Capital. Doraswamy, said that Ideaspring aims at investments in early-stage product innovation startups for entrepreneurs with deep technology and domain knowledge.Out of the fund size of Rs 125 crores, Rs 50 crores is aimed at seed funding and Rs 50 crore at pre-series/ series A funding. It will provide up to Rs 3 crore seed funding and subsequent co-investment at series A stage of up to Rs 5 crores. It has also announced the Startup Assist program to help startups in product management, customer management, best practices with hands-on approach.https://twitter.com/tech2eets/status/724523938886250497The key differentiator, Doraswamy says, is intellectual property in the form of algorithms and deep technology. Ideaspring Capital plans to invest in only 4-5 startups a year and offer high-tech Startup assist program to these handful entrepreneurs.Ideaspring Capital has raised majority of its investment from Indian investors such as Aarin Capital as the anchor investor, just at the time when government is looking for ways to boost domestic funding. It should be noted that the Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha had said that 90-95 percent of the venture capital money invested into the Indian startup ecosystem is from outside India."When we look at our entrepreneurs, we want to know what is so different that they are bringing to the table," Doraswamy adds. Talking about relatively newer tech trends such as Internet of Things (IoT) or Virtual Reality (VR), he added that some bits of technology may be new, but at the end it matters what the startup has done to prove it knows the technology well.