IIT Madras To Launch Rs 200 Crore VC Fund, Target Next Gen Unicorns
Chennai: Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) is going to catalyse the launch of a Rs. 200 Crore Venture Capital fund targeting the next generation of Unicorns.
The launch of ‘IITM Alumni Fund’ was announced during IIT Madras Sangam 2025 event in Bangalore on 5th July 2025 in the presence of alumni who had traveled from all over India and overseas.
With the number of startups coming up from IIT Madras increasing exponentially in recent years, the Institute anticipates several more unicorns in the future and is seeking to nurture these startups with careful investments that will help them scale.
This ‘IITM Alumni Fund’ will focus on Series-A and pre-Series A investments in. It will be a legally separate entity from the Institute that is being established to focus on the growth of IITM startups. A large majority of investments will be in IITM-incubated startups.
Investors in the fund are likely to be from the alumni and HNI community. The fund will function as a regular VC fund in terms of processes and governance.
IIT Madras Incubation Cell has already incubated 500 Start-ups that have a combined valuation in excess of Rs. 50,000 Crore (US$ 6 Billion approx) and created more than 11,000 jobs. Ather Energy recently became the first IIT Madras-incubated start-up to go public and the second IIT-M incubated unicorn after Uniphore, a global conversational AI and automation company.
Making this announcement, Prof. V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, said, “In our first fund, we want to raise Rs. 200 Crore through ‘IITM Alumni Fund’. All of you (the entire alumni community) can invest in this fund to help IITM Start-ups and yourselves. Here is an opportunity to work with great start-ups, great technologies and invest in them so that we both grow. This fund will also help accelerate our vision of ‘Start-up Shatam,’ in which the Institute seeks to incubate 100 deep-tech start-ups every year.”
Further, Prof. Ashwin Mahalingam, Dean (Alumni and Corporate Relations), IIT Madras, “We are at the cusp of an entrepreneurship revolution at IITM and need to carefully curate and scale the exciting startups that are coming out so that they maximize their impact. A focused Series A-level VC fund, where the investors are our own alumni and well-wishers, who have already contributed significantly to the growth of our ecosystem, is exactly what is going to get us there. We are thrilled to launch this fund.”
The key difference between the ‘IITM Alumni Fund’ and other regular VC funds will be that the Institute will help proactively work with its alumni to raise funds and will expose this VC fund to its startup ecosystem.
In addition, the fund and its investors will also support the IIT Madras ecosystem that nurtures startups, thus leading to a virtuous cycle of incubation and investment.
