IIT-Madras and Unicorn India Ventures launch ₹600-crore “IITM Unicorn Frontier Fund I” at a perform held in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, on Friday, February 6, 2026. Wanting on are (from left) Natarajan Malupillai, Group CEO of IITM Research Park; Swapnil Jain, co-founder and CEO, Ather power; V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras; and Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Associate, Unicorn India Ventures.
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RAGHUNATHAN SR
The Indian Institute of Expertise – Madras Research Park (IITM RP) has formally launched its ₹600 crore IIT Madras Unicorn Frontier Fund. The deep-tech-focused enterprise capital (VC) fund has chosen Unicorn India Ventures because the fund supervisor.
The fund, which may even have a ₹400 crore greenshoe possibility, will distribute capital within the vary of ₹5-10 crore.
Chatting with businessline, Natarajan Malupillai, Group CEO, IITM Research Park and IITM Incubation Cell, stated that the fund will assist start-ups working in frontier domains aligned with India’s long-term strategic wants together with defence, local weather tech, quantum computing and semiconductors, amongst others.
“In contrast to incubator grants, a devoted VC fund will present a lot bigger cheque sizes, guaranteeing that founders can proceed to deal with product improvement and innovation with out having to fret about fundraising,” he stated.
Malupillai added that the fund will now require ‘SEBI approvals’ which ought to take about 3-4 months. He added that the fund traders would contain each IIT Madras alumni and different HNIs and institutional traders.
As for the partnership with Unicorn India Ventures, he stated that the VC agency was chosen as a result of its experience within the deep-tech area and their confirmed observe file when it comes to fund efficiency metrics.
How the fund works
The fund will deploy 60 per cent of the investable corpus to construct the preliminary portfolio and reserve 40 per cent for follow-on rounds. The fund intends to assist 25-30 start-ups and in accordance with Malupillai, whereas the fund will deal with start-ups throughout the IIT M intubation system, it is not going to prohibit itself to it.
The fund will make use of a multi-stage method investing the proceeds dynamically in firms at numerous ranges of Expertise Readiness Stage (TRL) – a standardised nine-level measurement system used to evaluate the maturity of a know-how.
IITM RP had earlier initiated plans to launch the fund at a measurement of ₹500 crore, however in accordance with Malupillai, anticipating assist from Research Improvement and Innovation fund, the scale has been prolonged.
Talking on the launch of the fund right here on Friday, V Kamakoti, Director, IIT Madras, emphasised the necessity for endurance and perseverance in Deep-tech and stated that the institute is not going to pressurise start-ups with knee jerk reactions and can look to mentor them over the long-term.
Past the fund, IIT RP has incubated over 500 start-ups thus far with a mixed valuation of round $6 billion.
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Revealed on February 6, 2026
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