Deep-tech VC Speciale Invest plans ₹1,400 cr growth-stage fund
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Deep-tech focused venture capital firm Speciale Invest will launch Speciale Invest Growth Fund II, a Rs 1,400 crore growth-stage fund to support the scale-up of India’s most promising deep-tech companies soon.
The fund will invest in Series A and later stages and will provide the patient, execution-focused growth capital needed to take proven technology to commercial scale. With plans to raise the corpus in the New Year, the new fund is expected to fill a major gap in India's deep-tech ecosystem.
“Deep-tech has never been about chasing short-term cycles,” says Vishesh Rajaram, Founding Partner at Speciale Invest. “It is about building institutions that can compound value over decades—often starting with uncomfortable science risk and long timelines.”
Since 2017, Speciale Invest has been an active participant and catalyst in backing deep-science and deep-technology startups at their earliest stages and working closely with founders as they translate breakthrough research into real-world impact. Over the past eight years, Speciale Invest has focused exclusively on deep-tech across sectors such as advanced manufacturing, space technologies, climate and energy, health and biosciences, and AI—areas where innovation is capital-intensive, defensibility is technology-led, and long-term outcomes matter.
Speciale Invest has been the first institutional investors in Nuclear Fusion (Anubal Fusion), Space-tech (Agnikul Cosmos, Galaxeye Space, Inspecity), Quantum-tech (Qnu Labs), Semicon (Mindgrove Tech, Morphing Machines), advanced air mobility (ePlane Company), and in sector leaders like Fermbox Bio, Peptris AI.
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However, the majority of India’s deep-tech capital formation today is concentrated at the pre-seed and seed stages, typically corresponding to Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 1 to 4. While this early support has been instrumental in spawning innovation, the transition from validated technology (TRL 4) to commercial scale, revenue generation, and sustainable institutions requires a very different kind of capital.
To fill this gap, Speciale Invest Growth Fund II is designed to support founders through the most execution-critical phase of their journey—bridging the gap from TRL 4 to commercially sustainable businesses. Leveraging Speciale Invest’s unique early-stage pipeline, deep sectoral expertise, and long-standing relationships with academia and industry, the fund aims to partner with a concentrated set of high-conviction companies and participate meaningfully in their long-term value creation.
“India’s academic ecosystem has reached a point where the quality of research is no longer the bottleneck,” notes Arjun Rao, Founding Partner at Speciale Invest. “The real challenge now is execution—turning validated science into scalable, competitive businesses.”