Axilor Ventures: The Infosys-Built Seed Fund That's India's Startup Finishing School

Few seed funds in India carry the pedigree of Axilor Ventures. Founded in 2014 in Bengaluru by Infosys co-founders S.D. Shibulal and Kris Gopalakrishnan, alongside Srinath Batni, Harvard professor Tarun Khanna and co-founder & CEO Ganapathy Venugopal, Axilor calls itself a "new generation platform" for early-stage entrepreneurs — and has grown into one of India's most active seed funds, with a founder community of over 400+ founders.

Thesis and sectors. Axilor invests in startups across supply chain, enterprise tech, B2B commerce, agriculture, healthcare, climate and fintech — the unglamorous-but-critical verticals where technology compounds real economic value. It operates as an active seed fund rather than a hands-off cheque-writer: every portfolio company gets access to mentors, a peer community and what the firm calls "the odds-improvement" playbook for the first two to three years of the journey. Its focus has broadened over the years to include deep tech and AI through its dedicated fund vehicles.

Fund size and cheque size. Axilor launched the Axilor Technology Fund I — a SEBI-registered Category I AIF — in 2018 with a corpus of ₹200 crore, writing seed cheques of up to ₹3 crore per company, with roughly half the fund reserved for seed-stage investments and the rest for pre-seed bets through its accelerator. In 2022 it announced its second vehicle, the Axilor Technology Fund II, targeting $100 million to back 100–125 startups with cheques of up to $750,000, setting aside 30% of the corpus for follow-on investments in its winners.

Notable portfolio. Axilor was an early backer of e-sports player Loco (which raised a $43M Series A), multi-language media app Pratilipi ($48M Series D) and diagnostics technology provider SigTuple (over $40M raised). Its 60+ company seed portfolio also includes Niramai (AI breast-cancer screening), Wiz Freight (digital freight forwarding), Urban Piper (restaurant-tech SaaS), Reshamandi (silk supply chain), MetalBook, EnKash, Medfin, Headfone and Vyapar. CEO Ganapathy Venugopal has noted that 48% of Axilor's seed portfolio has raised Series A — against an industry average of just 18%.

Partners. Beyond its iconic founding team, the firm is led operationally by Ganapathy Venugopal, with Payal Shah heading investments and Kris Gopalakrishnan as chairman.

Programs, credits and perks. Axilor's flagship Axilor Accelerator is a structured 100-day program run twice a year (historically March and September batches) to take founders from idea to customer validation and seed readiness — alumni include Discover Dollar, Placeoforigin and Storewalk — with partner benefits from leading tech companies, talent access and a grant. Its Scale-up program and Early Stage Funding arm back accelerator graduates with seed capital on meeting milestones. The firm also partnered with IDG Ventures on frontier-tech cohorts.

How founders can approach them. Axilor actively recruits through open calls for its accelerator batches — applications open twice a year via axilor.com. For direct seed funding outside the accelerator, the team prefers early companies with fast-growing user sets and early signs of product-market fit; a warm introduction through the 400+ founder alumni network never hurts.