Chennai-based Bluehill.VC builds a ₹150 crore war chest to go beyond deep tech

As deep tech ecosystem matures, the pool of investors scouting to back IP-backed businesses is also growing.

Bluehill.VC, a Chennai-based venture capital firm, which received SEBI approval in 2024, has raised around ₹150 crore till date for its deep tech-focused investment strategy, the co-founders of the fund said.

“In April 2024, we applied for SEBI license and got it in May. We set out to raise ₹50 crore and achieved a first close of about ₹80 crore in August last year. Against our official target of about ₹350 crores, we have raised ₹150 crore so far,” Sridhar Parthasarathy, co-founder and General Partner, Bluehill.VC, said.

The fund’s backers are largely HNIs, UHNIs and family offices, and it is now also tapping institutional capital, and is working closely with SIDBI to close a raise. Bluehill also has an in-principle approval from the Kerala government.

Founded by Manu Iyer and Sridhar Parthasarathy, Chennai-based Bluehill goes beyond ‘deep tech’ and backs those “creating IP around the engineering and science domains”. The average ticket size ranges from $750,000 to $2 million in first cheque and $2-4 million range in follow-on rounds. Energy, EVs, Nuclear, Semiconductors Material Science, Defence, and Space are among their focus areas.

“While deep tech is the flavour of the season, we are a 100 per cent IP-focused fund and looking to back ventures that don’t just localise a global idea but are completely changing how things are built,” Manu Iyer, co-founder and General Partner at Bluehill.VC, said.

Bluehill has made two investments so far, and is in the final stages of investing in two more start-ups. EtherealX, a startup developing a fully reusable 25-ton launch vehicles is one, while Zebu Intelligent Systems, a counter drone solutions firm working closely with the armed forces is the other investment. They are looking at other investments including a proprietary cell technology firm and a venture building ultra-low power AI inference chips. “We are looking at doing 16 to 20 investments from this fund,” Iyer said.

As a BTech graduate from IIT Madras who also studied business, Iyer brings the deep tech focus, and Parthasarathy, who comes with 30 years of experience across both the public and private markets investing, has a tight grasp of financials and transaction structures.

“We are one of the few funds to have an external Investment Committee (IC) of professionals and we go ahead with our deals only after 100% mandate from the IC,” says Iyer.

Vipul Parekh, the co-Founder of BigBasket and Sify Technologies’ CFO MP Vijay Kumar make up the IC. IIT-Madras’ Ashok Jhunjhunwala and Vinod Dham, renowned as the Father of the Pentium Chip, are its advisors.  

Parthasarathy says the pipeline of founders is a lot richer today with more willingness to start up on their own. On the other hand, there is also more patient capital now, he says. “If you look at allocation of VC money into deep tech, research shows that 10 years ago it was at around 10 per cent, but today the same is about 20 per cent,” he adds.

Iyer believes that the time is right, and tailwinds are many for businesses with deep IP. “There is an understanding from the government’s side that we are decades behind China in industrialisation, and they are willing to back the efforts through various initiatives,” he says. “There are also enough great businesses; we’re having like 8-10 calls per week with deep tech entrepreneurs,” he adds.

However, be it money raised by the Chennai-based fund or its investments itself, Tamil Nadu’s absence is glaring.

“It’s not about the quality of talent [in Chennai] but more about the ecosystem. It’s about the willingness of the founders to take the plunge and high-net worth individuals to allocate risk capital,” Parthasarathy said.

Published on June 9, 2025