IIM Ahmedabad's venture platform IIMA Ventures has averaged six to eight exits from its startup portfolio every yearsince the financial year 2012-13 (FY13)—a pace of returns that outstrips even some of India's leading venture capital funds.
IIMA Ventures exited Pune-based Unbox Robotics earlier this year when the warehouse automation startup raised $28 million in its Series B round led by ICICI Venture. It was among the first institutional backers of the company, writing an $80,000 ( ₹75 lakh) cheque when it raised a $500,000 seed round back in 2020. IIMA Ventures saw an 8X return on its investment.
“We're there when the founders start their zero to one journeys, and when they start raising follow-on rounds, there are other partners to clean up the cap table,” said IIMA Ventures managing partner Priyanka Chopra.
Other exits include a 60X return on its investment in drone delivery startup Airbound, which is currently in the process of closing its pre-Series B round, and a 7X return on Finarkein, which is also in the process of raising its pre-Series B round. IIMA Ventures had participated in Airbound's $1.7 million seed round back in 2022 while Finarkein had been a part of the firm's Financial Inclusion Lab back since 2021.
“Exits give us the ability to make new investments. It makes more sense to invest in up-and-coming interesting opportunities rather than holding on to companies where our part in their story has played out,” said Chopra.
The startup incubator, part of the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), is barred from raising funds from institutional investors due to regulations governing educational institutions’ involvement in commercial, for-profit activities. As a result, IIMA Ventures doesn't operate a fund, and instead invests through its balance sheet. The firm, which invests in pre-seed and seed-stage companies, has since last year doubled cheque sizes to up to $500,000, from $200,000 earlier.
IIMA Ventures, formerly known as IIMA-CIIE (Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship), was launched in 2002 and later incorporated as a Section 8 (non-profit) company in 2007–08.
Since inception, it has accelerated over 3,000 startups, and invested in 800 companies. Its portfolio companies have raised a total of $3 billion in follow-on capital from both local and global investors.
The investment platform is one of the few associated with India's premier engineering and business schools to have shown not just successful investments, but also exits. However, other institutions are also realising that there's money to be made by backing groundbreaking technology and risk-taking entrepreneurs.
In December 2025, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay's society for innovation and entrepreneurship launched a ₹250-crore fund focused on backing early-stage deeptech startups. Similarly, IIT Madras Research Park tied up with Unicorn India Ventures in February this year to launch a deeptech-focused ₹600-crore fund.
On average, IIMA Ventures picks up a 5-7% stake in a startup when it makes an equity investment. To be sure, most seed investors in India’s startup ecosystem typically acquire a 10–20% stake when writing the first cheque. This reflects the higher risk they assume, as they often back companies that lack a product, revenue, or sometimes even product-market fit.
But even as a seed investor, IIMA Ventures remains highly selective about companies it decides to back. The firm evaluates an average of 5,000 deals per year, and ends up backing only about 100 companies. That's a 2% selection rate.
First pitstop
The firm's support for its early-stage portfolio companies goes beyond cheques. Often, first-time founders require a lot of hand-holding, not just in how to run a business, but also how to raise funds, develop organizational culture, find product-market fit and several other important processes.
The platform's support encompasses four tracks: capital, coaching, connections, and a community of founders. It runs sector-focused bootcamps and GTM (go-to-market) workshops, connects founders to testing labs and industry pilots, and curates introductions to downstream investors—not as a referral network but based on what it knows about specific funds and sectors. GTM is a business strategy to launch, position, and sell products to customers.
IIMA Ventures doesn't always invest through equity, it also sometimes provides grants and convertible notes. The cheque the firm writes depends on how far along a company is in its lifecycle. “Often, when companies are very early, without clear technology or markets, how do you value something like that,” said Chopra. “It's better to give them grant money to fund their experiments. But grant money also gives you a view of a founder's vision, how their company is performing and how competent they are.”
