Bangalore, 3rd March 2022:

Building on the success of the first edition, Chiratae Ventures, the country’s leading venture capital firm, announced the launch of the second edition of Sonic today. Last month, Chiratae announced investments into 19 startups in 2021 as part of the first edition of Sonic, their flagship seed investment program. The first edition saw companies across Consumer-tech, SaaS, Deeptech, Metaverse, Web3 and B2B Enterprise tech raising seed investments from Chiratae. ByteLearn, one of the Sonic-2021 companies, also raised a follow-on round of funding within six months of closing their seed round. Chiratae Ventures saw over 3,000 deals across the calendar year of 2021. Most of them came from founders at seed and pre-series-A stages. With a platform like Sonic, the team expects to receive over 4,000 applications from the startup ecosystem through the year.

Sonic was born from the vision of accelerating and democratising the fund-raise process for founders at an early stage. Through this initiative, the team at Chiratae assures a 48-hour turnaround on investment decisions on funding requests up to USD 500,000 from the first pitch session. In addition, Chiratae invites applications from founders of companies looking to raise up to USD 2 million as part of Sonic.

The promise of rapid investment decision-making via Chiratae Sonic will entail standard investment terms for equity investments and accelerated diligence for all investments.

Commenting on the launch of the second edition, Mr Sudhir Sethi, Founder and Chairman, Chiratae Ventures, said, “Chiratae Sonic promises to be even more exciting. We invite young entrepreneurs, especially in high-end technologies in various verticals, with an ambition to build large, globally scaled companies. Our seed investments, Uniphore, Emotix, Hevo Data, Redcliffe, Bizongo, PlayShifu, ByteLearn and Pyxis, are a testimony to the success of the Sonic program.”

To make this process seamless and much easier for early-stage founders, Chiratae has opened up the application process through its website. Unlike the first edition, which had an application window open for just seven weeks, Sonic’s current and future editions will receive proposals from startups throughout the year without compromising the agility of response. In addition to investments, the companies in each edition of Sonic will receive value addition in the form of mentorship from Chiratae’s founder network and Industry veterans through a structured set of webinars and learning sessions, and perks and support across services for their next stage of growth.

Through the Sonic program, Chiratae also plans to engage more deeply with student entrepreneurs passionate about technology and innovation. Chiratae aims to identify, mentor and invest in startups with technology at their core, across dynamic industries such as: