AET Fund to invest USD 50 millions in startups in India, US

Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund (AET Fund) Wednesday said it will invest in startups in the US and India that are engaged in areas like content, media and entertainment. With more than 10 deals in the pipeline, AET Fund is looking at investing in another five to six startups before the end of the year, a statement said.

"The fund will support and nurture heart driven business ideas at the cusp of entertainment and technology. With an initial corpus of USD 50 million aimed at investing in India and the US, the fund aims to create distinctive values in content, media and entertainment space," it added. The corpus will be used for seed to series A funding in the selected startups.

In the US, AET's investment portfolio includes entities like professional esports team - Faze Clan, in-game video chat - Bunch, and live streaming entertainment - Ripkord. "The fund aspires to leverage its global experience and expertise on its India journey, and scale up as it gains local insights.

"To begin with, AET will work with Indian startups operating in areas including video content, vertical media, vertical e-commerce, esports, mobile game, vernacular content and content IP business," the statement said. Tomoya Ogawa, Managing Director at AET, said the company is excited about working in a market as diverse and dynamic in India.

"India has a very important role to play in the next leap of content creation and consumption and we're excited to work with innovative startups enabling that. "We hope to bring our learnings and best practices from disruptive ideas and platforms across Japan and the US and create a symbiotic relationship with the flourishing startup ecosystem here," he added.

(With inputs from agencies.)