YourNest Venture Capital: India’s only deeptech-dedicated VC fund, founded 2011 in Gurugram by Sunil Goyal, Sanjay Pande, and Girish Shivani. Three funds: Fund I ($14M, 2012), Fund II ($30M, 2017), Fund III ($69M, 2021). Total AUM: $113M deployed, portfolio valued at ~$1.2B as of May 2025. Fund I performance: 4.6x Gross MOIC, 190% DPI at 21.7% IRR. Fund II performance: 3.2x Gross MOIC, 30% DPI at 31% IRR — ranked by CRISIL as the best-performing fund in its vintage. Fund III: 1.2x Gross MOIC and 16.6% IRR with 18 investments. NIIF (India’s sovereign infrastructure fund) anchor investor in Fund III — its first-ever VC investment. Portfolio: 58+ companies including Uniphore (unicorn), Miko, Dozee, Exponent Energy, EtherealX, QpiAI, MapMyCrop, Leanworx, CargoFL, ThinkMetal, Presage Insights, DeepMatrix, Perkant Tech. Investment stage: Seed and Pre-Series A. Cheque size: ₹3–10 crore ($500K–$1.5M) per company. Sectors: AI, IoT, Robotics, SpaceTech, HealthTech, EdTech, Quantum Computing, Advanced Manufacturing. YourNest-SanchiConnect Velocity Programme: Joint early-stage deeptech accelerator. Coined term: “challengineers” — founders tackling deeply complex technical problems. Model: “Nurture capital.” Here’s what deeptech founders need to know in 2026.
The Fund That Was Here Before DeepTech Was Cool
In 2012, betting on Indian deeptech was not a popular move. The startup ecosystem was riding the consumer internet wave — everyone was chasing app downloads, user growth, and fast revenue. Hard tech, IP-led innovation, and complex enterprise technology weren’t what the crowd was excited about.
YourNest Venture Capital launched its first fund that year anyway, with $14 million, and started backing companies building technology that would take years to prove out. It was one of the earliest moves anyone made toward what India’s startup ecosystem has only recently started taking seriously at scale.
Fourteen years later, YourNest has backed 58+ companies across three funds, produced one unicorn (Uniphore, a conversational AI company that is now valued at over $1 billion), and delivered returns that have been independently certified by CRISIL — an S&P affiliate — as the best-performing funds in their respective vintages and categories. Their total portfolio is valued at approximately $1.2 billion as of May 2025. That is not hype. Those are audited, third-party-verified numbers.
India’s deeptech moment is arriving. YourNest has been here the whole time, which means they understand this space the way no generalist fund does — and that understanding is exactly what a founder building something technically complex needs from their first investor.
Who Founded YourNest and Why It Matters
YourNest was co-founded in 2011 by Sunil Goyal, Sanjay Pande, and Girish Shivani — three people who, between them, had spent decades in enterprise technology, product development, and startup building before they started investing.
Sunil Goyal, the MD and fund manager, has spoken candidly about the decision to go deeptech-only. In an interview in 2025, he described YourNest as having “pioneered investments in deeptech startups” when the category was still invisible to most VCs, and credited the firm’s success to a willingness to be early and patient in a way that most investors are not structurally able to be.
The firm’s name is intentional. “YourNest” signifies exactly what they want portfolio founders to experience — the fund as a nest, a place to return when you’re in a difficult phase, a structure that gives you stability while you’re still learning to fly. Sunil Goyal has put this in his own words: “If you, as an entrepreneur, keep doing well, you can keep coming back to us for extra capital and guidance. Whenever you are in a fledgling mode, come down to our nest, and we will be able to give you the wings to fly again.”
For a founder building something technically hard that most people don’t fully understand yet, that kind of language from an investor is not just nice to hear. It reflects a structural truth about how YourNest actually operates — which brings us to their most important differentiator.
Nurture Capital: What It Actually Means
Most VCs describe themselves as “value-added investors.” The honest version of that sentence is usually: we write cheques, we sit on boards, and we help when you specifically ask us to.
YourNest calls their model “nurture capital” — and the specifics are worth understanding because they describe a genuinely different level of engagement.
YourNest maintains a deliberately high partner-to-founder ratio. They invest in a small number of companies per fund — 16 in Fund I, 19 in Fund II, 18 in Fund III — so that every portfolio company gets real, concentrated attention rather than the kind of periodic check-in that happens when a partner is managing 40 investments simultaneously.
The support they provide goes across five areas that matter most in the early years of a deeptech startup:
- Product and technology decisions. YourNest’s partners have deep technology backgrounds. When a portfolio founder is choosing between two architectural approaches or deciding how to scope an MVP, the conversation with the YourNest team is substantive, not superficial.
- Go-to-market strategy. Deeptech founders are often exceptional technologists who have spent less time thinking about distribution, sales cycles, and enterprise buying processes. YourNest helps translate product capability into a commercial strategy that can actually work.
- Hiring and team building. Early-stage deeptech companies need to attract technical talent that is hard to find and expensive to hire. YourNest’s network and active involvement accelerates this.
- Financial discipline and governance. This is something YourNest has been explicit about: building good financial habits, reporting standards, and governance structures early — before a company is large enough for it to become a crisis if it hasn’t been done right.
- Follow-on fundraising. YourNest’s relationships with larger VCs and institutional investors mean portfolio companies get warm introductions to their next round, not just encouragement to go find it themselves.
This model works because YourNest only deploys from a small number of funds and stays involved with portfolio companies across their growth stages, not just at entry. Several Fund II companies, including Miko, Dozee, and Exponent Energy, have received follow-on capital from YourNest in later rounds. That’s not standard. Most early-stage funds exit or dilute away. YourNest keeps investing in companies they believe in.
Three Funds, Three Chapters of India’s DeepTech Story
The fund-by-fund evolution of YourNest tells you a lot about where they started, where they’ve gone, and where they’re investing now.
Fund I — YourNest Angel Fund ($14M, 2012): Started with consumer internet, then pivoted to deeptech within two years. First major deeptech bet: Uniphore, a conversational AI company that became YourNest’s only unicorn and returned 70% of the corpus in two exits by 2020. Portfolio of 16 companies. Current performance: 4.6x Gross MOIC, 190% DPI, 21.7% IRR. Ranked in Preqin’s Top 10 Alternative Assets in India in 2017 — as the youngest VC firm to appear on that list.
Fund II — YourNest India VC Fund II ($30M, 2017): First fully deeptech-dedicated fund. Focus: IP-led, enterprise-oriented, globally scalable products. Anchor investor: Electronics Development Fund (Government of India). 19 investments including Miko (AI robotics), Dozee (contactless health monitoring), Exponent Energy (fast-charging EV infrastructure), ARYA.AI (horizontal AI platform). Ranked by CRISIL as the best-performing AIF in its vintage and category. Current performance: 3.2x Gross MOIC, 31% IRR.
Fund III — YourNest Innovative Products VC Fund III ($69M, 2021): Largest fund. Expanded scope: AI, IoT, Robotics, AR/VR/MR, Dev Tools, Edge Cloud, SpaceTech, Quantum Computing. Anchor investor: NIIF (National Investment and Infrastructure Fund) — India’s sovereign infrastructure fund, making its debut VC investment. Additional LPs include SIDBI, family offices, and UHNIs. 18 investments to date, with several more completed after December 2024. Current performance: 1.2x Gross MOIC, 16.6% IRR (early stage, fund still deploying).
The progression from $14M to $30M to $69M over three five-year cycles is not accidental. Each time, YourNest raised more capital because the previous fund’s performance justified it. The NIIF investment in Fund III is particularly meaningful — India’s sovereign infrastructure fund does not make first-time bets lightly. It chose YourNest as its debut VC investment after reviewing the track record from Funds I and II. That is an institutional endorsement that carries real weight.
Who They’ve Backed — and What the Pattern Shows
The YourNest portfolio tells you more about their investment thesis than any description could. Look at recent investments and the pattern becomes very clear.
EtherealX raised $5 million from YourNest in August 2024 and $5 million more in a Series A in January 2026. EtherealX is developing reusable launch vehicles for satellites — this is Indian private space technology at its most ambitious. YourNest backed the company from early stage in a sector most Indian VCs haven’t figured out how to evaluate yet.
MapMyCrop raised $1.8 million in a Pre-Series A led by YourNest in March 2025. The company uses satellite and AI data to help farmers make better decisions. Real-world problem, deep technical core, large market — classic YourNest profile.
Leanworx raised ₹8.3 crore in December 2024 in a seed round led by YourNest. They help manufacturing plants track production data in real time. The industrial IoT opportunity in India is enormous and vastly undercapitalised — and YourNest has been building conviction in it for years.
Presage Insights raised ₹5.6 crore in February 2025 from YourNest for IoT and AI-based predictive maintenance. Reducing equipment downtime with sensors and machine learning is exactly the kind of practical, enterprise-grade deeptech YourNest keeps returning to.
ThinkMetal and CargoFL both raised from YourNest through the YourNest-SanchiConnect Velocity Programme in early 2025 — a joint accelerator-to-investment program that YourNest runs with deeptech accelerator SanchiConnect to identify the most promising early-stage deeptech founders and get capital to them faster.
Perkant Tech raised ₹6.6 crore in April 2025, building an AI-enabled medtech platform for multi-disease health prognosis. HealthTech with genuine AI at the core, targeting real diagnostic challenges — another sector YourNest has backed consistently across funds.
The through-line: every company is solving a problem in the physical world — agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, space, healthcare — using technology that requires real engineering depth to build. None of these are software companies with a data science layer. They are companies where the IP is the moat, the technical complexity is the barrier to entry, and the commercial opportunity is large because the problem is large.
The YourNest-SanchiConnect Velocity Programme
One specific path worth knowing about if you’re an early-stage deeptech founder: the YourNest-SanchiConnect Velocity Programme.
This is a joint initiative between YourNest and SanchiConnect, a Pune-based deeptech accelerator. The program is designed to fast-track the most promising early-stage deeptech startups from validation to first institutional funding. Companies that enter the program get mentorship, technical guidance, market access, and a clear path to receiving seed investment from YourNest if the evaluation goes well.
ThinkMetal and Induz both received YourNest investment through this program in 2024 and 2025 respectively. For founders who want structured engagement before jumping straight into a fundraising process, this is a meaningful entry point into the YourNest ecosystem — and a route that has proven to lead to actual investment, not just advice.
What Founders Should Prepare Before Reaching Out
YourNest is explicit about what they look for, and it gives founders a useful framework for preparing before initiating a conversation.
Their investment criteria focus on four things consistently: a founder team that is synergistic and deeply committed to the problem, a product idea that serves a large addressable market, enterprise-oriented technology with IP that can be protected and defended, and products built on emerging technology that can operate at scale. Those four questions map directly to what they’ll probe in any early meeting.
What they do not require is perfection. YourNest invests at idea stage, prototype stage, and early traction — the three moments where most institutional investors won’t engage seriously. If you’re a deeptech founder with a clear problem, a strong technical hypothesis, and a credible team, the absence of revenue is not a blocker here.
Their typical first cheque from Fund III is ₹3–10 crore ($500K–$1.5M). That’s seed territory — meaningful enough to get a company through the next phase of development, small enough that YourNest can make the bet before the outcome is obvious.
The Bottom Line
YourNest Venture Capital: India’s oldest deeptech-only VC fund. Founded 2011. $113M deployed across three funds. Portfolio valued at ~$1.2B as of May 2025. 58+ investments. 1 unicorn (Uniphore). 9 acquisitions.
Performance: Fund I at 4.6x MOIC, 190% DPI. Fund II at 3.2x MOIC, 31% IRR — CRISIL’s best-performing fund in vintage. Fund III at 1.2x MOIC and deploying. NIIF’s debut VC investment was in Fund III.
Investment stage: Seed and Pre-Series A. Cheque size: ₹3–10 crore. Sectors: AI, IoT, Robotics, SpaceTech, HealthTech, Quantum Computing, Advanced Manufacturing, Edge Computing.
Model: Nurture capital. High partner-to-founder ratio. Small number of bets per fund. Active involvement across product, GTM, hiring, governance, and follow-on fundraising. Stays invested through multiple rounds.
Entry point: YourNest-SanchiConnect Velocity Programme for founders at the earliest stage. Direct application for those ready for a seed or pre-Series A conversation.
India’s deeptech moment is here. The government is investing in it. Global capital is paying attention. And the founders building in robotics, quantum, spacetech, industrial AI, and precision agriculture are finally getting the recognition they deserved years ago. YourNest has been backing those founders since before it was fashionable — and 14 years of deeptech-only investing is not something any newer fund can replicate quickly.
For a deeptech founder who wants a first investor that genuinely understands what they’re building and will be present throughout the journey — not just at signing — YourNest is one of the most honest options available in India today.