Latest news with #MadhusudhanKela
Mint
6 days ago
- Business
- Mint
Yali Capital raises $104 million in debut deep-tech fund
Yali Capital, a deep tech-focused venture capital firm, has closed its ₹ 893 crore (~$104 million) maiden fund. The firm had set out to raise ₹ 500 crore with a ₹ 310 crore greenshoe option but managed to raise more than that from its limited partners, which the founders believe is a sign that India's appetite for deep tech is growing. In fact, the firm raised 78% of its maiden fund from Indian firms and individuals, while the rest was raised from outside sources. Yali Capital's investor base includes corporate entities like Infosys Ltd, Qualcomm Ventures, Tata AIG General Insurance Co. Ltd, Madhusudhan Kela's Singularity Fund of Funds, Kris Gopalakrishnan's family office Pratithi Investments and notable individuals like ideaForge founders Ankit Mehta and Rahul Singh. 'The involvement of family offices has been a significant tailwind,' said Vishesh Rajaram, managing partner at deep-tech-focused venture capital firm Speciale Invest. 'Their longer capital horizon does make them good partners for deep tech founders. Many are moving beyond traditional sectors, actively co-investing in batteries, space, dual-use defense applications, and more.' Overall, Yali Capital is bullish on six sectors within deep tech: chip design, aerospace and surveillance, robotics, genomics, artificial intelligence, and smart manufacturing. The firm is allocating 50% of the fund to chip design and aerospace, while the other 50% will go towards the remaining four sectors mentioned above. The firm's cheque sizes will range from $2 million to $10 million. 'We're allocating 70% of the fund towards early stage (pre-seed, seed and Series A) investments and 30% will go towards late stage (Series D and beyond) companies from the fund,' Yali Capital's founding managing partner Ganapathy Subramaniam told Mint in an interview. He founded the firm with Mathew Cyriac, the former co-head of Blackstone India PE, which managed $3 billion in assets. The $104 million fund is the largest deep tech-focused fund to close so far this year. According to private company data platform Venture Intelligence, Endiya Partners and Triton Fund have raised $92 million and $14 million, respectively, in 2025 for their new deep tech-focused funds. Other than these two, there are five other firms working on raising capital for the sector, including Speciale Invest ($35 million), Mela Ventures ($117 million) and IIMA-CIE's Bharat Innovation Fund II, which is targeting a $150 million fund. India has only about 50 or so deep tech-focused venture capital firms, according to data from market research and data platform Tracxn. The largest deep-tech deals happened in 2023, Venture Intelligence data showed. Hyperspectral satellite imaging firm Pixxel raised the most at $36 million, followed by drone startup NewSpace at $33 million and AgniKul Cosmos at $25 million that year. Yali believes that the government's 2021 Design Linked Incentive (DLI) Scheme to boost semiconductor chip design will help push more and more startups in the chip design and surveillance sectors. 'The DLI scheme is crucial to attract talent back to India to build an Indian chip company. The scheme has a very important role to play,' said Subramaniam. One of Yali Capital's investments, C2i Semiconductors, a fabless chip company, received DLI approval from the ministry of electronics and information technology earlier in January. For deep-tech firms such as Yali Capital, entering at the seed and pre-seed stage allows them to exit companies having made a large return on their investment. 'We believe that India's deep tech ecosystem has matured and, as a result, exit cycles have also shifted. An exit in 7-8 years is highly possible,' Subramaniam said. Yali Capital has made two other investments apart from C2i Semiconductos, robotics startup Perceptyne and oncology genomics startup 4baseCare. Two more are in the pipeline, with the firm planning to make eight investments by the end of the year. Overall, through the fund's lifecycle, the firm plans to make 18 investments: 15 early-stage startups and three late-stage startups. While entering late-stage startups, Yali Capital plans to put in at least $10 million, mostly targeting primary deals and not secondaries. 'If I stay with my late-stage investments for two to three years, then I will almost return the entire capital to investors,' said Subramaniam. Traditionally, deep-tech firms need to give their investments time to mature since timelines for their portfolio companies are longer than traditional bets in sectors like fintech or consumer tech. On average, deep tech startups take between 9 to 10 years to really get going, having spent the years prior investing in their intellectual property and technology. Many investors in the deep-tech sector allude to a phenomenon called the 'Valley of Death', where startups achieve proof-of-concept of their ideas but fail to commercialize them, making it harder for them to get funding after a Series A round. 'What's been missing in deep tech has been scale and monetization because startups haven't found enough domestic customers yet. The government as a customer is still a new phenomenon. Once these patterns are better established and deep-tech firms start generating predictable revenue like peers in SaaS or fintech, growth capital will become available," said Pranav Pai, founding partner and chief investment officer at3one4Capital. Speciale Invest's Rajaram highlighted the need for more patient capital at the Series B and C stage from sovereign funds and corporate VCs, public procurement and anchor customers, and more policy-enabled demand aggregation, similar to the government's Innovations for Defence Excellence programme. 'Bridging this gap is not just about helping startups survive—it's about enabling India to build sovereign capabilities in areas that matter for the future," he said.
Mint
23-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
India's manufacturing bet draws millions as sector-focused funds surge
Bengaluru: Singularity AMC, the investment firm backed by veteran investor Madhusudhan Kela, is raising capital from select investors seeking exposure to portfolio companies with significant presence in high-growth manufacturing sectors. The fund is mandated to support sectors such as renewable energy, energy storage, transmission and distribution, battery materials, critical energy minerals, defence, electronics, semiconductors, medical devices, nuclear energy, and aerospace and automotive components. 'The deal size will range between ₹250 crore and ₹500 crore alongside co-investors who will invest in high-growth manufacturing companies," said Yash Kela, founder and chief investment officer of Singularity. 'We are aggressively investing in the sector and we believe that there is great potential to invest capital and get scalable exits." Founded in 2016, the firm has invested in several manufacturing companies such as Lohum CleanTech, HEG Ltd, Qucev, Sterling and Wilson Data Center and Silver Consumer Electrics, among others. Some of these companies may eye a public listing in the coming year, charting a viable route for exits for Singularity. New class of sector-specific funds Singularity's push comes as a growing number of investors look to tap India's manufacturing potential. While sector-specific funds remain relatively uncommon in India's investment ecosystem, their rise suggests a shift in strategy as firms pursue more targeted exposure to high-growth verticals. Over the past year, several firms with significant exposure to manufacturing have launched new funds to tap into the sector's potential, even as they continue to invest across other verticals, according to data from Venture Intelligence. These include Amicus Capital, Trident Growth Partners, RevX Capital, Veloce Opportunities Fund, Finnolve, Folks Motor, and Arka Investment Advisory. Amicus Capital has raised $171 million in its first close for a fund targeting $200 million. Trifecta Capital has raised $120 million toward a $240 million goal, while Trident Growth Partners has secured $117 million toward a target of $234 million. While these funds maintain diversified strategies, each has significant exposure to the manufacturing segment. Even smaller firms are reorienting strategies to tap the opportunity. Capital-A, a seed-stage investor, has pivoted its $50 million second fund to focus on manufacturing and deeptech. Founder and lead investor Ankit Kedia attributed the move to 'macroeconomic tailwinds in the country which are pointing towards a very strong manufacturing sector". Other sectors, including proptech, media and climate tech, have also seen increased interest from sectoral funds over the past year. While such strategies have existed in the Indian investment landscape for some time, they are increasingly coming to the fore as investors seek to make more focused bets on sunrise industries to maximize returns. This uptick in activity comes as private equity and venture capital investors look to identify the next wave of companies that will strengthen supply chains and accelerate India's shift toward an export-led economy. Several large manufacturing deals have materialized this year. VIP Industries raised $206 million in a round led by Multiples. Euler Motors secured $75 million from GIC and British International Investments, while Scimplify raised $40 million in a deal led by Accel and Omnivore Partners. Rangsons Aerospace also raised capital in a round led by ValueQuest. According to Venture Intelligence, firms have raised close to $1.9 billion in 2025 so far, about 60% of last year's total of $3.2 billion across 123 deals. Macroeconomic tailwinds and policy push The momentum reflects a shift triggered by pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, which exposed India's reliance on imports and prompted a policy and capital push toward local manufacturing. Several venture capital firms and startups began aligning their focus accordingly. 'We are seeing strong tailwinds from the China-plus-one strategy, which is driving both domestic and global demand for more resilient, distributed, and technology-enabled supply chains," said Prashant Prakash, partner at Accel. Accel recently announced its eighth fund with a $650 million corpus, and has identified manufacturing as one of its key focus areas. The firm has previously invested in companies such as Zetwerk—which derives most of its revenue from international markets—automated composite manufacturer Fabheads, and Nabhdrishti Aerospace, a gas turbine engine company. Motilal Oswal Alternates, another firm leaning into the shift, has strengthened its team over the past two years to sharpen its focus across various manufacturing sub-segments. 'Defence, electronics, automotive and other components are getting added to the entire manufacturing sector," said Prakash Bangla, managing director at the firm, adding that the construction and building materials segments are also expected to pick up. Government initiatives have also played a catalytic role. In 2020, a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme was launched across 14 sectors, including medical devices, pharmaceuticals, IT hardware, and drones, with a total outlay of ₹1.97 trillion. As of August last year, realized investments stood at ₹1.42 trillion, according to an official release. However, earlier this year, Reuters reported that the government does not plan to extend the scheme beyond its current scope, citing delays in subsidy payouts and difficulties in ramping up production in some sectors. 'What it helped with was to get the ecosystem running. For folks who wanted to build and survive, they've found a way to do it," said Kedia, adding, 'Any business that depends on PLI was never a business to start with." He cautioned that while industries like smartphones, pharma and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) are blue-chip, manufacturing startups must build clear differentiators or risk margin compression across the board. Still, investor interest remains buoyed by targeted policy interventions. Earlier this year, the government launched a new PLI scheme focused on EMS sector, with a proposed investment of ₹59,300 crore and projected incremental production of ₹4.6 trillion. EMS players, whose components serve defence, medical devices, and consumer appliances, are already seeing traction. 'Aerospace and defence, medical devices and semiconductors will be split 40:40:20. India is going to be a huge driver for our semiconductor vertical," said Kaushik Mudda, founder and CEO of Ethereal Machines. Currently, about 80% of the company's revenue comes from exports to other nations. The precision manufacturing startup, backed by Peak XV Partners and Steadview Capital, expects its revenue mix to shift as the national manufacturing focus deepens. Defence and aerospace account for 70% of revenue, while medical devices make up 20%. General engineering and semiconductors contribute 5% each. The flip side of the EMS sector, according to Kedia, is concentration risk, where a company's revenue is concentrated to one or two clients. If they lose those, they risk going under. 'Eventually, for the EMS ecosystem to thrive and survive, they'll need a mix of large, medium and small customers, so they can de-risk and not have more than 10% concentration from one client." Opportunities and gaps Still, challenges remain as India attempts to position itself as a credible alternative to China. Experts say it may take another 10 to 15 years to close the capability gap. 'At the moment, we still rely on China when it comes to tools and tool designing. The other aspect is top-end talent to actually set up plants in sectors like EMS. For a sector like semiconductor manufacturing, we still hardly have the engineers available," said Amarjeet Singh Makhija, partner and markets lead advisory for startups and unicorns at PwC India. Capital-A's Kedia noted that we don't necessarily need cheap labour to compete with China. 'We are seeing that there are ways to automate it, and that's the lever playing out in many startups today, and this will further drive investments in the space." Recent data underscores the tension between bullish sentiment and the real economy. India's manufacturing activity rose to a 14-month high in June, with the HSBC PMI climbing to 58.4 from 57.6 in May—well above its long-run average of 54.1. Yet the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) tells a more muted story. Industrial output grew just 1.2% in May, the slowest pace in nine months. Manufacturing, which accounts for nearly 78% of the index, expanded only 2.6%, down from 3.1% in April and sharply below the 5.1% growth seen a year earlier. As capital, policy, and global demand converge, investors are betting that India's next manufacturing leap will be built not just on cost arbitrage—but on capability.
Mint
16-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
Madhuri Madhusudan Kela trims stake in multibagger stock Waaree Energies in the June quarter
Ace investor Madhuri Madhusudan Kela, wife of prominent investor Madhusudhan Kela has pared down her holding in solar module maker Waaree Energies to below 1 percent, signaling a quiet exit after backing the company even before its IPO. While her name featured among key shareholders with a 2.07 percent stake at the end of March 2025, she is now absent from the latest shareholding disclosures, indicating her stake has fallen below the reporting threshold. Kela's exit comes at a time when the multibagger stock Waaree Energies is actively diversifying its business model to reduce earnings concentration. The company is transitioning into a fully integrated New Energy player, making strides into green hydrogen, electrolyser production, inverters, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). According to Nuvama, these strategic initiatives provide Waaree a strong foundation for sustained long-term growth, improved margins, and a massive multi-decade growth opportunity. The brokerage has a 'buy' rating on the stock with a target price of `3,622. However, opinions remain divided. Kotak Institutional Equities has maintained a 'sell' rating, despite acknowledging strong revenue prospects. The firm expects growth to be driven by improved utilization of Waaree's solar module manufacturing facilities and scaling up of its 5.4 GW solar cell plant. Margin gains are likely from economies of scale, favourable customer mix, and the higher-margin cell segment. Kotak has set a lower target price of `2,620. Waaree Energies has recently seen robust international traction. In June 2025, it secured a fresh 599 MW solar module order in the U.S., adding to an earlier 586 MW deal. With these additions, total order inflows for Q1FY26 crossed 1,200 MW. The orders were booked through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Waaree Solar Americas Inc. The company stated, 'Waaree Solar Americas Inc secures 599 MW order in the US, surpassing 1,200 MW+ in new deals for FY25-26 Q1, underscoring resilience and growing momentum in the American market.' The company posted stellar results for Q4FY25. Net profit more than doubled to ₹ 648.49 crore, supported by stronger sales and operational efficiencies. Revenue for the quarter rose 37.69 percent YoY to ₹ 4,140.92 crore. For the full fiscal year, Waaree Energies reported a net profit of ₹ 1,932.15 crore, up 107.08 percent YoY, while annual revenue reached ₹ 14,846.06 crore, a 27.62 percent rise from FY24. Waaree Energies' stock has given multibagger returns, surging122 percent from its IPO price of ₹ 1,503 set in November 2024. Year-to-date in 2025, the stock has gained 10 percent, registering positive returns in five out of the first seven months. Disclaimer: The views and recommendations made above are those of individual analysts or broking companies, and not of Mint. We advise investors to check with certified experts before making any investment decisions.
