Infosys, one of the leading IT consultancy service company of India, is all set to make its first investment in an Indian venture capital firm. As per the report from ETTech, based on four people aware of the matter, Infosys is going to invest around $15 million in Stellaris Venture Partners.
Although this is the first investment from Infosys in an Indian venture capital fund, the company had earlier invested in Silicon Valley based early-stage VC firm – Vertex Ventures.
The investment in Stellaris Venture Partners will be made through its $500 million Innovation Fund, which was set aside to invest in early-stage startups. Till now, Infosys has directly invested in around seven startups from its Innovation Fund. The fund has invested in Trifacta, Waterline Data, WHOOP, CloudEndure, Airviz Speck, ANSR Consulting, and Nova.
The Infosys Innovation Fund was launched in 2015 with an aim to invest in entrepreneurial ventures delivering innovation in domains relevant to the company’s core business. Its aspiration was to amplify start-ups that build purposeful solutions while being steered by innovators who share the same mindset as of Infosys – nurturing deep client relationships with an unwavering commitment to ethics and mutual respect.
While Infosys is investing $15 million, the VC firm’s goal is quite large. It is aiming for a final corpus of around $100 million from local and well as global investors. Another person aware of the development said that the VC firm is also reaching out to “a lot of wealth managers who manage money for large family offices”.
Stellaris Venture Partners was set up by Alok Goyal, Rahul Chowdhri and Ritesh Bangalani. All three of them were previously partners at India-based Helion Venture Partners. The firm describes itself as an early stage venture fund looking to support the next generation of companies.
The VC firm says that the $2 Trillion economy is growing at ~7% and has world’s second largest internet user base. Thus, it sees a massive opportunity for new tech enabled business across all industries.
This investment news from Infosys and Stellaris comes at a time when Indian software services giants are actively participating in startups and technology innovation globally. Along with Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services has jumped in to support startups.
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