Yali Capital, a deep tech-focused enterprise capital agency, has closed its ₹893 crore (~$104 million) maiden fund.
The agency had got down to elevate ₹500 crore with a ₹310 crore greenshoe possibility however managed to lift greater than that from its restricted companions, which the founders consider is an indication that India’s urge for food for deep tech is rising.
The truth is, the agency raised 78% of its maiden fund from Indian corporations and people, whereas the remaining was raised from exterior sources.
Yali Capital’s investor base contains company entities like Infosys Ltd, Qualcomm Ventures, Tata AIG Normal Insurance coverage Co. Ltd, Madhusudhan Kela’s Singularity Fund of Funds, Kris Gopalakrishnan’s household workplace Pratithi Investments and notable people like ideaForge founders Ankit Mehta and Rahul Singh.
“The involvement of household places of work has been a major tailwind,” mentioned Vishesh Rajaram, managing companion at deep-tech-focused enterprise capital agency Speciale Make investments. “Their longer capital horizon does make them good companions for deep tech founders. Many are shifting past conventional sectors, actively co-investing in batteries, house, dual-use protection functions, and extra.”
General, Yali Capital is bullish on six sectors inside deep tech: chip design, aerospace and surveillance, robotics, genomics, synthetic intelligence, and sensible manufacturing.
The agency is allocating 50% of the fund to chip design and aerospace, whereas the opposite 50% will go in direction of the remaining 4 sectors talked about above. The agency’s cheque sizes will vary from $2 million to $10 million.
“We’re allocating 70% of the fund in direction of early stage (pre-seed, seed and Collection A) investments and 30% will go in direction of late stage (Collection D and past) firms from the fund,” Yali Capital’s founding managing companion Ganapathy Subramaniam advised Mint in an interview.
He based the agency with Mathew Cyriac, the previous co-head of Blackstone India PE, which managed $3 billion in belongings.
Deep-tech funding
The $104 million fund is the most important deep tech-focused fund to shut thus far this yr. In keeping with non-public firm information platform Enterprise Intelligence, Endiya Companions and Triton Fund have raised $92 million and $14 million, respectively, in 2025 for his or her new deep tech-focused funds.
Aside from these two, there are 5 different corporations engaged on elevating capital for the sector, together with Speciale Make investments ($35 million), Mela Ventures ($117 million) and IIMA-CIE’s Bharat Innovation Fund II, which is concentrating on a $150 million fund.
India has solely about 50 or so deep tech-focused enterprise capital corporations, in line with information from market analysis and information platform Tracxn.
The most important deep-tech offers occurred in 2023, Enterprise Intelligence information confirmed. Hyperspectral satellite tv for pc imaging agency Pixxel raised probably the most at $36 million, adopted by drone startup NewSpace at $33 million and AgniKul Cosmos at $25 million that yr.
Yali believes that the federal government’s 2021 Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme to spice up semiconductor chip design will assist push an increasing number of startups within the chip design and surveillance sectors.
“The DLI scheme is essential to draw expertise again to India to construct an Indian chip firm. The scheme has a vital function to play,” mentioned Subramaniam.
One among Yali Capital’s investments, C2i Semiconductors, a fabless chip firm, acquired DLI approval from the ministry of electronics and data know-how earlier in January.
For deep-tech corporations comparable to Yali Capital, getting into on the seed and pre-seed stage permits them to exit firms having made a big return on their funding. “We consider that India’s deep tech ecosystem has matured and, because of this, exit cycles have additionally shifted. An exit in 7-8 years is extremely potential,” Subramaniam mentioned.
Yali Capital has made two different investments other than C2i Semiconductos, robotics startup Perceptyne and oncology genomics startup 4baseCare.
Two extra are within the pipeline, with the agency planning to make eight investments by the tip of the yr. General, via the fund’s lifecycle, the agency plans to make 18 investments: 15 early-stage startups and three late-stage startups.
Whereas getting into late-stage startups, Yali Capital plans to place in no less than $10 million, largely concentrating on major offers and never secondaries. “If I stick with my late-stage investments for 2 to 3 years, then I’ll nearly return all the capital to buyers,” mentioned Subramaniam.
Challenges stay
Historically, deep-tech corporations want to present their investments time to mature since timelines for his or her portfolio firms are longer than conventional bets in sectors like fintech or shopper tech. On common, deep tech startups take between 9 to 10 years to essentially get going, having spent the years prior investing of their mental property and know-how.
Many buyers within the deep-tech sector allude to a phenomenon referred to as the ‘Valley of Loss of life’, the place startups obtain proof-of-concept of their concepts however fail to commercialize them, making it more durable for them to get funding after a Collection A spherical.
“What’s been lacking in deep tech has been scale and monetization as a result of startups have not discovered sufficient home prospects but. The federal government as a buyer remains to be a brand new phenomenon. As soon as these patterns are higher established and deep-tech corporations begin producing predictable income like friends in SaaS or fintech, development capital will turn into obtainable,” mentioned Pranav Pai, founding companion and chief funding officer at3one4Capital.
Speciale Make investments’s Rajaram highlighted the necessity for extra affected person capital on the Collection B and C stage from sovereign funds and company VCs, public procurement and anchor prospects, and extra policy-enabled demand aggregation, much like the federal government’s Improvements for Defence Excellence programme.
“Bridging this hole is not only about serving to startups survive—it’s about enabling India to construct sovereign capabilities in areas that matter for the longer term,” he mentioned.