Early-stage venture capital firm StartupXseed Ventures LLP has hit the first close of its second fund that will focus on deep-technology startups, according to multiple media reports.

The fund has raised Rs 65 crore ($8.84 million at current exchange rates) and expects to mop up the full Rs 150 crore over the next six to nine months, The Economic Times reported.

This new fund comes almost four years after StartupXseed raised its first fund, which had a targeted corpus of Rs 100 crore.

The second vehicle has received commitments from several family offices and professionals from the information technology sector.

It will focus primarily on investments in the deep-technology segments, including semiconductors, cybersecurity, drones and aerospace. It will also look to invest in the artificial intelligence and machine learning sectors.

The fund will look to make around 15 investments with ticket sizes ranging between Rs 3 crore and Rs 10 crore, StartupXseed managing partner BV Naidu and co-founding partner Ravi Thakur said, per the report.

The firm was founded by Naidu, Thakur, TV Mohandas Pai (through Aarin Capital) and Ramakrishna V.

VCCircle has reached out to the venture capital firm on the details of this new fund and will update this report accordingly.

The vehicle will also look at potential investments in the financial- and health-technology sectors, and says it aims to deploy the entire corpus over the next 24-30 months.

Our goal from the first fund was to stabilise the process, identify the thesis of our process and provide post-investment support, Naidu said. StartupXseed says it has made around 12 investments from Fund-I and has recorded three exits so far.

Two of these are complete exits from bot management solutions provider ShieldSquare and fabless semiconductor firm Siliconch Systems. It has also recorded a partial exit from the human resources-focussed software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm Darwinbox.

Last month, StartupXseed took part in a Rs 8 crore (around $1.07 million) pre-Series A funding round in SmarterBiz, an AI-based customer experience platform. Other portfolio companies include Bellatrix Aerospace and Singularity Dynamics.

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Early-stage VC StartupXseed hits first close of new fund - VCCircle