Mumbai-headquartered Piper Serica Advisors has raised Rs 75 crore for its Category 1 Alternative Investment Fund (AIF), which aims to back early-stage tech start-ups. However, it did not reveal the names of the investors who contributed to the fund. 

The AIF holds a corpus of Rs 100 crore. Piper Serica is hopeful that it will raise another Rs 25 crore in a couple of months. 

So far, the angel fund has invested in companies like ALT Mobility, Creditwatch, ZFW Dark Stores, Driffle and Oditly. It has invested in sectors including SaaS, EV( electric vehicle), fintech, e-commerce and digital marketing. 

The company aims to close eight more deals within March 2023. Additionally, it targets to invest in 30-40 start-ups in the next three years. It wants to include a supply chain management start-up, a cybersecurity company and a learning management company in its portfolio in the coming time. 

Talking about the latest development, Abhay Agarwal, the founder and director, said, “We are investing in several high-quality companies and expect to have very profitable exits from them in line with our strategy. We are very happy with the presence we have created in the startup ecosystem. We are seeing very high-quality deal flow from other funds, platforms, and directly from founders.” 

The Indian start-ups struggled a lot in 2022 due to a so-called 'funding winter.' Companies either slashed their valuation to generate funds or moved to debt fundraising. However, an INC 42 report suggests that nearly 126 were launched last year compared to 61 in 2021. These funds jointly raised $18 billion for investments.