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<ul><li><keyword id="3246584" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Iron-Pillar">Iron Pillar</keyword> invests in Series B to Series C rounds of technology-focused startups.</li><li>Its portfolio includes conversational AI startup Uniphore, online jewellery seller BlueStone and edtech Testbook.</li><li>The company has made 12 investments since 2016 and has received one exit to date. </li></ul>Technology-focused <keyword id="189401" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Investment-firm">investment firm</keyword> Iron Pillar is expecting to double its assets under management (AUM) by the end of 2022, as its portfolio companies continue to thrive during the pandemic. The company currently has a AUM of $500 million and is expected to hit $1 billion by December 2022. Iron Pillar is also looking to close 2021 with seven to eight investments. The investment firm has already closed four fresh deals so far, which includes edtech startup Skill-Lync that offers upskilling courses for engineers, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) startup Uniphore and cloud-based automation platform Ushur. The investment firm typically invests $5 million to $15 million in Series B and Series C rounds — or in companies with an average revenue run rate (ARR) of $4 million to $10 million. “On the breakout companies, we continue investing till they [go for an] IPO/M&amp;A [initial public offering or mergers and acquisitions] and can invest $50-100 million in each company as they scale up,” Iron Pillar’s managing partner Anand Prasanna told Business Insider. “Nothing has fundamentally changed in our investment thesis since we were investing primarily in cloud software companies building from India for the world, right from 2016. But COVID has further solidified our conviction in the space with our portfolio recording a 2.4 times average growth over last year, maintaining strong unit economics. This strong performance is continuing as we speak and so we are more bullish on the space,” Prasanna said. Iron Pillar’s portfolio has 12 startups including — device management platform Servify, cloud governance and compliance platform CoreStack, vegetables and meat e-commerce platform FreshtoHome, online jewellery platform BlueStone and competitive exams preparation platform Testbook. The investment firm does not have any unicorn — startups valued at or above $1 billion — to its portfolio, yet. However, a recent report by investment firm Chiratae Ventures and consulting firm Zinnov <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/india-software-service-sector-needs-more-than-200000-employees-by-2025/articleshow/84632003.cms">highlighted</a> that Uniphore is going to be among the next software-as-a-service (SaaS) unicorns soon. The report, released in July 2021, also named MindTickle and workforce management software FarEye to be next in line of the unicorn club. Of this, MindTickle has already <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/mindtickle-is-the-third-saas-firm-from-india-to-enter-the-unicorn-club-in-2021/articleshow/85069737.cms">announced</a> its unicorn round of $100 million led by SoftBank. Iron Pillar, founded in 2016, closed its first fund at $90 million in October 2018. It later raised another $45 million in May 2020 to top up the first fund. The investment firm launched its fund II in April-June quarter of 2021. The fund II has received $10 million from Indian exporter of processed foods and agro commodities Allana Group. Iron Pillar has not shared the total targeted corpus of fund II due to international regulations. “Our first fund was closed in October of 2018. So, it is early for us to talk about large exits. We have already had one exit, where [sic] NowFloats was acquired by Reliance Jio. We made a good IRR [internal rate of return] on this investment,” Prasanna said. NowFloats offers SaaS solutions to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to expand their digital presence. The company was acquired by Reliance for<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/mukesh-ambani-targets-to-take-50-million-msmes-online-as-reliance-launches-jiobusiness/articleshow/81412975.cms"> ₹141.6 crore</a> ($19 million) in 2019. SEE ALSO <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/telecom/news/what-if-vodafone-idea-dies/articleshow/85127937.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">What if Vodafone Idea dies?</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/telecom/news/vodafone-idea-and-airtel-shares-fall-as-sc-rejects-agr-dues-re-computation-appeal/articleshow/84668288.cms">Vodafone Idea sinks nearly 10% and Airtel tumbles a bit after India’s Supreme Court denies a discount on past dues</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/markets/news/cost-cutting-is-not-helping-vodafone-idea-fresh-funds-might-but-nothing-is-coming/articleshow/84092610.cms">Cost cutting is not helping Vodafone Idea, fresh funds might ⁠— but ‘nothing is coming’</a>

FreshtoHome and BlueStone-backer Iron Pillar is planning to bring assets worth $1 billion under management

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Swedish investment firm EQT Ventures employs a proprietary AI and big data tool to identify hot startups to invest in as it looks to stay ahead of the pack in Europe.</li><li>The fund's data-driven efforts have seen four of its last 10 investments come through its "Motherbrain" technology.</li><li>EQT says investors which don't become data-driven risk being left behind in the future. </li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary">Click here for more BI Prime stories</a>.</li></ul>Investors across all asset classes are are always looking for a cutting edge over the competition but the pace of change has been markedly slower in venture capital than in other sectors.That may be changing as the industry looks to adopt algorithmic and data-driven investing as standard, with Sweden's EQT Ventures set up deliberately for that purpose.EQT Ventures is a relatively new fund within the Stockholm-based private equity group EQT which covers traditional sectors in credit, public equities, and infrastructure. One of the firm's cofounders, EQT Ventures partner Lars Jörnow, estimates that four of the fund's last 10 investments have come through Motherbrain, its propriety AI platform.Motherbrain, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/eqt-ventures-partner-reveals-why-ai-is-the-future-of-venture-capital-2018-8?r=US&amp;IR=T">referred to as a she with her own email address at the fund</a>, has scanned more than 10 million startups, and is an essential part of the operations of EQT as the VC firm looks to compete with larger funds."We're in a competitive situation where founders have the choice of many funds which is hard to quantify so we think long term, 15-20 years from now, if you're not data-driven you won't be around anymore," Jornow told Business Insider in an interview at Web Summit in Lisbon.The platform is built out of a variety of data sources including website traffic, app store downloads, valuation data, fundraising news, financial data, and investor information alongside other inputs from members of the EQT Ventures team.Some of the recent investments made through Motherbrain include Amazon Go competitor <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/25/standard-cognition-lands-35m-at-535m-valuation-to-battle-amazon-go/">Standard Cognition</a>, augmented reality gaming studio WarDucks, college student career network Handshake, and remote desktop company AnyDesk.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div></div></div>The example of AnyDesk is cited by Jörnow as proof of Motherbrain's value to the fund. The company, which raised a €6.5 million ($7.8 million) Series A last May, is based in Stuttgart and seemed to have been passed over by Berlin's VC scene but its activity was picked up by Motherbrain, leading to EQT Ventures' investment.The firm's first investment through Motherbrain was Danish employee data startup Peakon in 2017.Unsurprisingly, the fund is bullish on Motherbrain's future uses. Jörnow predicts that some 90% of the firms investment decisions will come through Motherbrain in the next five years.<h3>Unicorn hunting and breaking tradition</h3>Motherbrain's applications are breaking the mold in the world of venture capital where personal connections and stereotypes of an "old boys' network" can still apply. However, EQT Venture's operating partner for analytics, Henrik Landgren says that EQT will soon do away with many traditional data sources. "We don't need to see pitch decks, even great ones, or pitches from our close friends because we already have the data on these companies."The platform would have successfully picked out a number of - undisclosed - unicorns in the market with its current configurations, EQT claimed. Landgren indicated that the fund is constantly adding sources to Motherbrain and that as much time is spent analyzing and learning from existing data sets as looking for new ones.His data team is now six people out of a total at 15 across the EQT firm which has more than $45 billion in AUM, of which its venture arm is approximately $650 million emphasising its focus on data.Not everyone is convinced by the move to big data in venture, though. Last year multiple people left <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/social-capital-founding-partner-ted-maidenberg-is-joining-arjun-sethis-new-vc-firm-2018-7?r=US&amp;IR=T">Silicon Valley fund Social Capital after it announced a move towards more data-driven decision making</a>.But the trend is becoming more common. Notably GV (formerly Google Ventures), Correlation Ventures, Fly Ventures, and of course the aforementioned Social Capital pioneered "CaaS" - capital-as-a-service, in imitation of software-as-a-service.Notably, as big data and analytics transform other market sectors it seems EQT have made this pursuit one of its central pillars across its portfolio. Earlier this year it was reported that the fund would let Motherbrain loose on its buyout fund which could significantly improve deal flow information and report making within the private equity group, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-26/eqt-s-motherbrain-ready-to-take-on-46-billion-in-buyout-funds">per a Bloomberg report</a>.There is still plenty to iron out. "We haven't even started," Landgren added. "It's a no-brainer that you would use tech to invest in tech companies so we will improve our algorithms. Soon all funds will be talking about using data."

Eschewing pitch decks and personal connections in favour of data - here's how a European investor uses AI to stay on top

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FreshtoHome and BlueStone-backer Iron Pillar is planning to bring assets worth $1 billion under management

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Eschewing pitch decks and personal connections in favour of data - here's how a European investor uses AI to stay on top

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