Yali Capital

Check the fit before you write

• Yali invests only in deep tech. Its six sectors are AI, aerospace and surveillance, life sciences, robotics, fabless semiconductor and smart manufacturing. If your company is a business-model or go-to-market play, this is not the door.
• Its fit check asks whether you are raising at pre-seed, seed, or Series A, and whether the core innovation is in the technology.
• It asks for defensible IP: a patent, trade secret or a technical moat that takes years to replicate. Be ready to name yours.
• It looks for a founding team with direct domain expertise, and a clear Indian market opportunity, global competitiveness from an Indian base, or both.

How to apply

• There is no application form or deadline. Send a deck or a brief note to the pitch inbox on its For Founders page.
• The investments team reads every submission. If there is alignment, you will hear back within two weeks.
• After screening come meetings with the founding team, then diligence on technical claims, competitive landscape and unit economics.

What makes a strong pitch

• Lead with the technology. Yali calls the technical insight the most important slide in your deck.
• Be specific about the moat: patents, trade secrets, proprietary data or unique expertise.
• Show domain depth: prior research, patents or industry experience of you and your co-founders.
• Size the market from the bottom up, naming the specific buyer, use case and path to revenue.
• State your ask clearly: how much you are raising, at what structure, and what it will get you to.

Yali Capital is a Bengaluru venture capital firm that invests only in deep tech: companies whose core advantage is a technical breakthrough. Its website is yali.vc, and the older yalicapital.com address redirects there. It says it invests at seed and pre-Series A and operates as an active partner through the build.

What Yali backs

Yali works across six sectors: artificial intelligence, aerospace and surveillance, life sciences, robotics, fabless semiconductor and smart manufacturing. Its pitch page describes each. Life sciences runs from oncology genomics to drug discovery. Robotics covers manipulation, locomotion and perception. Fabless semiconductor means custom silicon, processor IP and specialised accelerators. Aerospace and surveillance covers UAVs, imaging, targeting, directed energy and space-adjacent technologies.

The firm is blunt about what it wants. The core innovation should be in the technology, not just the business model or go-to-market. It looks for defensible IP, such as a patent, trade secret or a technical moat that takes years to replicate. It also wants a founding team with direct domain expertise, and a clear Indian market opportunity, global competitiveness from an Indian base, or both.

How to pitch

Yali has a For Founders page with a short fit check and a five-step process. You send a deck or a brief note to the pitch inbox listed on that page. The investments team reads every submission. It then screens for thesis fit, stage and team, and says that if there is alignment you will hear from it within two weeks. After that come meetings with the founding team, diligence on the technical claims, competitive landscape and unit economics, and then the investment itself. Yali says it does not run long evaluation cycles.

There is no cohort, no application deadline and no fixed intake window. This is a rolling pitch to an investor, not a programme you apply to.

Portfolio

As of October 2026, Yali says its investments include seven active companies and one exited. The companies named on its site are PointAI, 4baseCare, Perceptyne, LatentForce, Micropack, Ultraviolette and Deeplase, with C2i marked as exited. They span AI, life sciences, robotics, smart manufacturing and fabless semiconductors.

Who runs it

The investment team listed on the site includes Ganapathy Subramaniam, Mathew Cyriac, Karthikeyan Madathil, Sandipan Mondal and Kaushik Ram. Lip-Bu Tan is listed as an advisor. Sunil S Patil and others handle operations. The firm describes its team as having a combined 60 years in the deep tech domain.

Fund and registration

Its Investor Relations page lists Yali Deeptech Fund I, a scheme of Yali Ventures, as a SEBI-registered Category II alternative investment fund, with Yali Partners LLP as investment manager. The registered office is in Kundalahalli, Bengaluru.

Location

Yali Capital is headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It runs no incubation space or coworking facility, and publishes no physical facilities for founders.