Info Edge has dramatically shifted its startup investment strategy, allocating nearly 50% of its startup investments over the past 12 months to deeptech and artificial intelligence sectors. According to Mint, this represents a significant departure from the company's traditional focus on consumer technology, which built multi-billion-dollar companies like Eternal (Zomato and Blinkit) and PB Fintech. As per Chinmaya Sharma, partner at InfoEdge Ventures, both AI and deeptech are transformational in creating new business models and have become topics of strategic interest for the country. The company's investments have traditionally focused on consumer tech, but the addition of these two sectors is driven by their transformational potential and strategic importance.
Info Edge (India) Ltd has achieved significant growth in its artificial intelligence startup investments, with the portfolio doubling to ₹1,268 crore from initial investments of ₹614 crore across 28 companies since 2020. According to the company's shareholder letter filed with exchanges, this represents a 31% gross internal rate of return (IRR). The company has invested ₹455 crore across 30 deeptech companies since 2007, with these portfolios combined valued at ₹559 crore, implying a 15% gross IRR. As per Moneycontrol, approximately ₹3,600 crore of the total investment has come directly from the company and its group entities, while approximately ₹1,300 crore has been contributed by external limited partners through alternative investment funds managed by the group, with the combined gross IRR of these funds standing at around 22%. Among the deeptech portfolio, 26 companies have raised follow-on funding, while from the AI segment, 15 companies have done so, including voice AI enterprise platform Gnani.ai.
The consumer technology segment continues to account for the largest share of portfolio value, with the company investing ₹2,755 crore across 45 consumer-tech and consumer-AI startups, resulting in a portfolio valuation of ₹37,000 crore. According to Moneycontrol, this segment has generated a 34% return and a 13.5x multiple on invested capital, making it the best-performing segment within the investment portfolio. Key holdings in this segment include Eternal, PB Fintech, ixigo, BlueStone, Wakefit and Adda247. The deeptech portfolio, where Info Edge has invested ₹455 crore across 30 companies, is valued at ₹559 crore, implying a 1.2x multiple and 15% gross IRR. Deeptech companies in the portfolio include skin health therapeutics startup Ahammune, electric air taxi company ePlane, Deepinder Goyal's air mobility startup LAT Aerospace and health tracking company Temple. The company has also invested in three consumer AI companies: Pokus.ai (a concierge service for consumers), Rumik.ai (which builds companion avatars and is a frontier AI lab), and Shoppin (a visual search and shopping discovery platform).
The company highlighted significant participation of portfolio companies in government programmes under the IndiaAI Mission and the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme. Voice AI startup Gnani.ai received ₹177 crore worth of GPU compute credits under the IndiaAI mission, while electric air mobility startup ePlane secured ₹285 crore under the RDI scheme, the highest allocation among 22 approved proposals. Spacetech company Manastu Space received ₹115 crore under the same initiative. As per Moneycontrol, advances in AI are expected to reshape both emerging and established internet businesses, with founder and Vice Chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani stating that "We believe future value creation will be driven by three themes predominantly - Artificial Intelligence, Deeptech and Consumer Technology." The company emphasized that India is increasingly positioned to build globally competitive technology companies, with the company's long-term investment strategy centred around these three key themes.
While its investments are performing well, Info Edge maintains a conservative investment approach, preferring smaller cheques and better valuations over larger funds. According to Mint, the firm usually invests in companies that are between technology readiness levels (TRL) of 1 to 3, while most venture capital firms investing in deeptech tend to invest at TRL levels of 4 and above. The company looks at at least 1,000 startups over the course of a year, brings in about 100 of them, and invests about 3-4 per quarter. "Given we fish in the early stage pond, it is somewhat unaffected by the high tides and low tides of in the public market," said Chinmaya Sharma, partner at InfoEdge Ventures. "On a month-on-month, quarter-on-quarter basis, we haven't seen that gloom seep into the early stage." The firm committed ₹250 crore to A88 Fund I in April to back early-stage deeptech startups in India, and even as its portfolio grows, it remains in no rush to write significantly larger cheques.
