Theia Ventures, an early-stage fund investing in climate technologies, has raised its maiden fund of $30 million and announced its maiden first close. The fund has already raised over 50% of its target fund, which displays great confidence of investors in the specialized mandate of the fund, and has formally started its capital deployment process. This historic financial milestone will be the first trigger of innovation in the nascent but critical decarbonization industry in India, which will enable about 18 to 20 early-stage startups focused on developing differentiated solutions to a cleaner future of energy. 

Fund’s strategy and focused investment

Theia Ventures Fund I is founded on a concentrated and focused investment thesis to support startups that build differentiated technologies to decarbonize key sectors. The most essential areas of investment are the heavy industry, manufacturing, material science, mobility, and supply chains. These industries are identified because they have a large footprint in emissions and enormous potential for change due to the introduction of technological innovations.

The fund plan is developed to open up a lot of required initial capital in Indian firms that are developing ground-breaking technologies in order to disturb the energy status quo. The firm has allocated more than 50% of its corpus to further investments to support the successful portfolio firms as they grow. Theia Ventures would usually have an initial investment of between $500,000 and $1 million.

Global investors and early developments

The commitment of British International Investment (BII) anchored the strong initial close of the fund. One of the anchor investors, BII, includes a wide range of global investors, such as corporate venture funds, fund-of-funds, and family offices. It is important to note that there are other international shareholders such as Allocator One (Germany), Cisco Foundation (US), and Vitality Capital Partners (Australia). 

Major family offices in the country and internationally also successfully joined the fund. This is a list of notable adherents with Anand Mahindra, Meher Pudumjee (Thermax Group), JM Financial, the Vimson: Shivanand Salgaocar Group, and Pramit Jhaveri (former CEO of Citibank India). This combination of institutional and personal capital underscores the global and local awareness of the climate technology potential in India.

Theia Ventures has already commenced capital investment, actively demonstrating its intentions to stick to its focus areas. The fund has been an early investor in such companies as Sarla Aviation, an electric air taxi start-up also funded by Accel. In Climetra Carbon, which is a biocoal company, Theia Ventures led a pre-seed round that the company targets to serve the steel industry.

The company behind this specific startup is a well-established team with a background in Stanford GSB, IIT-Bombay, and IIT-Dhanbad. Two other companies in the high-potential area of precision fermentation (biotech) and AI-based modelling of energy data have already been signed on by the fund. The company expects to declare additional investments at the beginning of 2026.

Conclusion

Theia Ventures is set to become one of the key financial enablers of the next generation of Indian companies, disrupting the traditional energy scene and developing solutions to a sustainable future with the final close that is expected to take place at the end of the current financial year. The emphasis on the initial and follow-on capital provision means that innovators are supported on a long-term basis.