IIMA Ventures: two decades of backing fearless founders from IIM Ahmedabad

Long before "accelerator" was a buzzword in India, IIM Ahmedabad was running one. Founded in 2002 as the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) - with support from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the Government of Gujarat - it rebranded to CIIE.CO in 2018 and to IIMA Ventures in 2024. The tagline says it all: "THE INNOVATION CONTINUUM" - capital and support from grant to Series A.

Investment thesis

IIMA Ventures backs "fearless entrepreneurs building disruptive solutions" - and explicitly stands with startups "at their risky early stages, when they need most support while there is hardly any available". Three investment themes: Deeptech (innovation-first ventures from India, for the world), Digitalization (for India's next half billion), Climatetech (tackling climate change). The capital continuum runs from government grants of around Rs 10-15 lakh to cheques of up to $5 million; in 2026 it said it plans to double pre-seed/seed cheques to $500,000.

Funds, stages and cheque sizes

The flagship vehicle is the Bharat Innovation Fund: a $100 million corpus (announced in 2015 with a $150M target by PM Modi; closed at $100M in 2018) for pre-Series A and Series A deeptech and IP-led startups, writing cheques up to about $4.5M. Its LPs include SIDBI, ICICI Lombard, SBI Life, Philips and Bajaj Electricals, plus family offices and HNIs. The Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund invests up to ~$1M in India-Stack-based ideas, alongside a $9.5M financial-inclusion lab with J.P. Morgan. Earlier, the incubator seeded Infuse Ventures (2012), India's first energy-focused VC with a corpus of over $15M. A combined organisation-wide AUM is not publicly disclosed.

Notable portfolio

The homepage's "Startups from the Continuum" reads like a hall of fame: ideaForge, Razorpay, Guvi, Agnikul, Zouk, Chara Technologies, Morphing Machines, 5C Network, Fourth Partner Energy, Tookitaki, SDE and Nabh Drishti - plus Ridlr, CreditVidya and Detect Technologies. As of August 2022 the organisation reported roughly 1,000 startups accelerated, 300 funded and 5,000+ mentored.

People

Priyanka Chopra is Chief Executive and Managing Partner of IIMA Ventures (2026). Kunal Upadhyay was CEO of CIIE.CO and Managing Partner of the Bharat Fund (2021); Vipul Patel is Partner, Seed Investing. The Bharat Innovation Fund was set up with Shyam Menon (co-founder, Infuse Ventures) and Ashwin Raguraman as founding/managing partners. Centres run in Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Indore, Bengaluru and Guwahati.

Credits and perks

The Startup Perks catalogue promises benefits "upward of $500K" across cloud, payments, marketing, dev tools and compliance - partner logos include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, AWS, HubSpot, Canva, Notion, Zoho, Razorpay and PayU. The Bharat Inclusion Initiative adds "USD 50,000 and more" per startup plus cloud credits, market access and fund-raising handholding. Ahmedabad incubation adds workstations, meeting rooms, high-speed wifi and community events.

How to engage

The Ahmedabad incubation programme (POC/MVP to early traction) runs a single-window application process routing startups to funding, mentorship, networking, shared infrastructure and investor exposure. Individual programmes carry their own apply pages on iimaventures.com - historic flagships include iAccelerator (2009), The Power of Ideas (2010), Powerstart (2011), the Deeptech Accelerator Fund (2023), Studio (a 6-month venture studio) and the AI Residency Program (2026). Front desk: [email protected], 079 71524201.