Infosys to Invest $10-25M in Six Early Stage Startups

Indian multinational corporation, Infosys is looking to evaluate six early stage startups in India for investments that focus on ares such as decision science and artificial intelligence. The company has allocated $250 million capital from its $ 500 million Innovation fund for investments in the range of $10-25 million per startup.

“The discussions are still at a very early stage,” said one of the persons directly familiar with the matter. “Most of the startups that companies like Infosys are looking to tap are incorporated in India, with their founders based out of the Silicon Valley.”

It has already invested in two startups – $15 million in an unnamed firm related to NASDAQ-listed DreamWorks Animation and an air purifictaion technology startup AirViz.

Infosys is finalizing an agreement with iSpirt to connect with early stage product companies. The company is also looking to invest in or acquire startups that typically build algorithms that can do predictive analytics.

“The startups that Infosys has connected with typically have been founded over the past 2-3 years — most of them are in the B2B (business to business) space,” a second person aware of the developments said.

Also, in February this year, the firm has acquired Panaya, Inc., a US-based automation technology startup for large scale enterprise software management, in cash, for an enterprise value of $200 million. Last month, it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire cloud hosted platform Kallidus Inc., for a deal amount of $120 million.

Infosys Technologies Limited