B2B-focused VC firm Exfinity Venture Partners launches Rs 1,100 crore Fund IV

Exfinity Venture Partners has filed with SEBI to launch its fourth fund, targeting a corpus of Rs 1,100 crore, as the deeptech focused venture capital firm builds on recent cross-border exits and a full capital return from its 2016-vintage Fund II.

The Bengaluru-based firm plans to retain an early-stage investment strategy for Fund IV, while allocating a larger share of capital to follow-on rounds. The shift reflects the longer build and commercialisation cycles typical of deep-tech businesses, partners Chinnu Senthilkumar and Jesper Ludolph told ETEntrepreneur. Cheque sizes are expected to rise modestly, with Exfinity continuing to target 10–20 per cent ownership in portfolio companies.

Fund IV will focus on semiconductors, physical AI, advanced compute, robotics and enterprise AI software. It will also expand into newer categories such as photonics, quantum computing, hydrogen and energy systems, life sciences, climate technology and mobility. The firm has not previously invested meaningfully in life sciences but now sees the ecosystem maturing, driven by founders with deep research backgrounds returning to build companies from India.

“We are seeing founders with deep research experience coming back to build from India,” Ludolph said. “Life sciences and drug discovery are becoming attractive because even a one-month reduction in development cycles can create significant value.”

Senthilkumar said the firm expects to stay invested longer in select companies from the new fund. “We will likely go up to Series C for the right companies because a lot of value is created by staying longer in deep tech,” he said.

Exfinity’s latest fund launch follows a series of exits that enabled a full capital return to investors in Fund II. Over the past 12 months, the firm exited semiconductor startup Kinara.ai after it was acquired by NXP Semiconductors, in one of India’s notable deep-tech M&A transactions.

According to the firm, a defining contributor to Fund II’s performance has been adtech startup Pixis. Exfinity had earlier executed a partial exit from Pixis, delivering a 60X multiple on invested capital, while continuing to hold a significant ownership stake.

“What we are seeing now is a clear shift in how global enterprises approach innovation and growth,” said Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner at Exfinity Venture Partners. “Repeated acquisitions of Indian-origin deeptech companies by Fortune 500 and multinational buyers show that strategic M&A has become a highly viable and lucrative exit path—on par with IPOs, growth-stage up-rounds, and private equity outcomes. For founders and investors alike, this opens up a much broader, more reliable set of global liquidity options.”

Exfinity has invested in around 40 startups to date. It has completed 17 investments from its third fund, with one more deal expected to be announced. Some of the firm’s earliest bets are now being validated as global market priorities shift.

Exfinity invested in Kinara in 2018, well before specialised AI chips gained wider attention, and backed Chara Technologies, which builds rare-earth-free motors, more than three years before geopolitical concerns around critical minerals became mainstream.