June 16, 2021– SAN FRANCISCO – True Blue Partners (TBP), a Bay Area-based merchant bank, has pledged to invest $5M in startups that graduate from the IIT Startups from its Venture Capital Fund. TBP Venture Fund’s focus is on Seed and Pre-Series A investments in entrepreneurs focused on building enterprise AI/ML/NLP applications. As part of this IIT Startups-focused initiative so far, TBP has invested in Quark.AI, Hwy Haul, Canvia, and Enact Systems startups graduating from Cohort 1, Cohort 3, and Cohort 5, respectively. Their other portfolio companies include Observe.AI, VectorFlow.AI, 3Clogic.com, and OSF. Digital
“Our focus is on helping entrepreneurs on their strategic financial priorities and at pivotal moments in their company building journey. For entrepreneurs focused on AI in the enterprise, that means investment capital to build product-market fit and select the right institutional investment – Sunil Grover, Managing Partner, True Blue Partners, and IIT Bombay Alumni.
Launched in 2018 by alumni of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Startups is a unique non-profit accelerator program in the San Francisco Bay Area. The partnership with True Blue Partners gives IIT Startups portfolio companies access to some capital during their fundraising endeavors.
“IIT Alumni are the 4th largest unicorn ($Billion startups) group after Stanford, Harvard, and UC Berkeley. This is a great start for our unicorn nursery – IIT Startups, a young two-year-old accelerator out of Silicon Valley at present. We have plans to expand to major global hubs where there is a concentration of our IIT alumni” – Monishi Sanyal, Founder & Chief Evangelist, IIT Startups.
About True Blue Partners
True Blue Partners (TBP) is a boutique merchant providing M&A advisory, private equity recapitalization, syndicates structured capital, and venture capital investment for entrepreneurs in enterprise SaaS and related services. Visit truebluepartners.com or follow us on LinkedIn.
About IIT Startups
IIT Startups provides free mentoring, coaching, and workshops to entrepreneurs to help them scale their companies. All our resources are available on the IIT Startups website free of charge. Past IIT alumni have co-founded or leading over 300 companies such as Cirrus Logic, Google, Juniper Networks, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, Sun Microsystems, Webex, Zscaler, and Poshmark. Visit iitstartups.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn
True Blue Partners
Sabine Zimmerhansl
szimmerhansl@truebluepartners.com
IIT Startups
Vasudha Badri-Paul
vasudha@iitstartups.org