Aum Ventures was early to deep tech in India when deep tech was still a contrarian bet. Founded in 2022 by founding partner Chetan Mehta, the Mumbai-based early-stage venture capital firm focuses on Indian founders building core IP-led deep-tech and technology-enabled companies — the kind that compete globally from day one.
The firm's track record is built on conviction bets. Aum Ventures has deployed around $30 million across 24 early-stage companies from its first fund, launched in 2023. Its portfolio reads like a who's-who of Indian deep tech: Skyroot Aerospace, where it was an early institutional investor before the company became India's first space-tech unicorn in 2026 and its Vikram-I became the first privately developed Indian rocket to reach orbit; Azimuth AI, a fabless semiconductor startup; Cosmoserve Space and Sanyark Space in spacetech; Sharang Shakti, an AI-led defence technology company that was acquired by LAT Aerospace; plus Sully.ai, Zime.ai and Latent AI in applied AI.
In June 2026, the firm launched its second fund, Aum Ventures – India Innovation Fund II, a SEBI-registered Category II Alternative Investment Fund with a target corpus of ₹750 crore (about $80 million). By August 2026 it had raised ₹225 crore in its first close, with more than 65% of commitments coming from international limited partners across the US, the Middle East and other markets — a strong signal of global appetite for Indian deep tech. The firm reports Fund I delivered a gross MOIC of 2.23x and a gross IRR of 53%.
Fund II invests at the pre-seed and seed stages with initial cheques of $750,000 to $2 million, reserving capital for follow-ons through Series A and B. Over its five-year investment period it plans to back 25 to 30 companies across spacetech, semiconductors, defence-tech, AI, robotics, energy transition and advanced manufacturing. Nisha Shah, formerly COO of strategy at the Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office, joined as general partner to lead investments from the new fund.
The firm also runs the India DeepSpark deep-tech initiative, whose first investment was $500,000 in Sanyark Space. Aum's stated bar for founders: IP-led innovation with the potential to build globally competitive companies — evaluated on global potential from the very first cheque.
Why it matters for founders
If you are an Indian founder building a genuinely hard technology — rockets, chips, defence systems, frontier AI — at pre-seed or seed stage, Aum Ventures is one of the few domestic funds with real deep-tech pattern recognition. It has taken companies from lab to orbit and to unicorn status, and its ₹750 crore second fund is actively deploying.