Infosys likely to close its second start-up investment

Bengaluru: Soon after closing its first investment in the start-up space, Infosys, India’s second largest IT services company is learnt to be in the process of making one more investment in a company which develops cloud-based air quality detectors.

According to a senior official at the Bengaluru-company, the investment is in line with Infosys’s strategy of providing support for start-ups that are innovative in new generation technologies such as internet of things (IoT), machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The executive however declined to divulge further details about the company and the quantum of investment.

Earlier this month, Infosys has announced its first investment in the start-up space when it invested around $15 million (close to Rs 94 crore) in a spin-off of animation movie maker DreamWorks Animation. That was Infosys’s first investment out of the $500 million innovation fund which the company had set up earlier. Infosys is the only investor in the spin-off company.

After assuming the charge of CEO & MD of Infosys in August last year, Vishal Sikka, a former top executive at German enterprise software maker SAP, is looking at multiple ways to engage with the software start-up ecosystem across the world. Last month, he announced expanding the innovation fund five-fold to $500 million. Subsequently, he had also announced to dedicate half of the fund for investment in innovative start-up companies in India.

“We will do things of that nature and we think that the information technology needs of the world require a different type of mindset for startups. More and more the innovations that businesses are looking for are going to come from start-up companies,” Sikka said at a recent analyst