BlueHill Capital

How to reach the fund

• Email contact@bluehillcapital.in with your deck. The fund asks the deck to cover your team, the opportunity, your business model, your USP, the competition, the funds raised so far and your business plan.
• The fund says it will reach out once it has reviewed the details. It publishes no deadline and no response time, so keep talking to other investors meanwhile.

Before you pitch

• Lead with the technology. The fund's stated focus is deep-tech, IoT, industrial, clean-tech and hardware-tech, with room for other technology and IP-driven ideas.
• The fund says it is usually among the first investors in a company, so a deck that explains what you have built and who is already in the round fits how it describes itself.
• Say what help you want beyond money. The fund offers guidance, brainstorming, introductions and help preparing for the next round.

What to check

• The site does not say how large the fund is, who the partners are or how many companies it has backed, and its portfolio panel is a third-party widget. Ask for these early.
• Ask how much it can reserve for follow-on rounds, since the site says it tries to keep capital back for them.

BlueHill Capital is an early-stage fund based in Nungambakkam, Chennai. Its site says it looks to back innovative startup ideas from India and beyond, and that its universe of interest includes deep-tech, IoT, industrial and clean-tech startups. Asked which verticals it invests in, it answers deep-tech, clean-tech and hardware-tech companies, while staying open to other technology and IP-driven ideas. If you are building hardware or an industrial product, you are closer to its stated focus than a pure consumer app would be.

The fund says it looks for smart founders who are willing to work hard. It describes itself as a very active investor: beyond capital, it says it makes time for guidance, brainstorming and idealisation, and opens its network to help startups scale and raise their next round. It also says it will mentor and advise startups to get them ready to raise capital, which makes it a reasonable conversation even if you are a little before the stage it usually invests at.

On timing, the fund says it is usually among the first investors on a company's cap table, though it has also joined rounds where the startup had already raised an earlier amount. It says it tries to hold back some capital for follow-on investments, so a first cheque can lead to more. Its site gives a cheque range and says exceptions are possible; that range is not repeated here because the fund can change it.

There is one stated way in. The site asks you to email its contact inbox with your deck, covering your team, the opportunity, your business model, your USP, the competition, the funds raised so far and your business plan, and says it will reach out once it has reviewed the details. It publishes no application window, deadline, form or selection process, so treat it as an investor pitch and not a programme. The site is a single page with a portfolio panel loaded from a third-party widget and no named team, so check the fund's current activity before you invest much time in a pitch.