Accel Closes Ninth India Fund With $550 Mn Corpus To Invest In AI, Deeptech

Global venture capital firm Accel has raised $550 Mn for a new India-focused fund as it looks to step up investments in artificial intelligence (AI), deeptech and other emerging startup categories in the country.

According to a Bloomberg report, the India fund is part of a larger $3.5 Bn capital raise that Accel is putting together across four new funds, as the VC firm looks to increase its exposure to AI and back startups at earlier stages of their growth.

The latest India fund comes roughly 18 months after Accel closed its previous India vehicle. In January 2025, the firm raised $650 Mn for its eighth India fund, with capital coming from 131 investors.

Accel currently has more than $3 Bn in total commitments to India and has increasingly focused on AI/ML, deeptech and consumer startups, while retaining a largely sector-agnostic investment approach. 

The new fund will give Accel fresh capital to back Indian startups at a time when AI is reshaping venture investment, with founders raising larger rounds earlier in their journey and investors competing to secure stakes in promising AI companies, Accel partner Harry Nelis told Bloomberg.

The global raise includes a $1.35 Bn fund focused on growth-stage investments and follow-on opportunities, while Accel is also raising separate funds for its other key markets.

Accel’s India Playbook

Accel has been investing in India for more than two decades and built one of the country’s most prominent early-stage portfolios.

Its India portfolio includes some of the country’s biggest tech startups, including Flipkart, Swiggy, Freshworks, Myntra, Acko, BlackBuck, BookMyShow, Urban Company, Moglix and Moneyview. Most of these startups have either gone public or are on the road to an IPO, underscoring Accel’s reliance on IPO liquidity. 

Accel was an early institutional investor in both Flipkart and Swiggy. It invested $800,000 in Flipkart as its first institutional investor and continued backing the ecommerce company until Walmart’s $21 Bn acquisition in 2018. It also entered Swiggy at the seed stage with a $1 Mn investment in 2015. 

Further, the VC firm first invested in Freshworks with a $1 Mn infusion in the SaaS startup in 2011 and subsequently participated in its later funding rounds before the company went public.

Accel has historically positioned itself as a first institutional cheque investor in India. When it raised its $650 Mn seventh India fund in 2022, the firm said it was the first institutional investor in more than 85% of its investments in India and Southeast Asia, with 95% of investments coming at the seed or Series A stage.

The firm has also been using its Atoms pre-seed programme to identify startups in AI and other emerging sectors.

In 2026, Accel partnered with Prosus to launch Atoms X, a programme aimed at investing in emerging Indian deeptech startups. The initiative has backed startups including Praan, QOSMIC, Dognosis, Ferra and EtherealX, with Prosus matching Accel’s capital commitments.

The latest fund comes as several large VC firms are expanding their war chest for India’s booming startup ecosystem. Last month, Elevation Capital launched its Fund IX with a target corpus of $500 Mn to back Indian startups across consumer tech, consumer brands, fintech and financial services, enterprise AI, frontier tech and healthcare.

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