Kedaara Capital backs AI life sciences company Axtria with $240 million

Mumbai-based private equity firm Kedaara Capital has announced a $240 million investment in Axtria, an agentic artificial intelligence (AI) company that serves the global life sciences industry.

The transaction consists of a secondary component to provide early investors an exit as well as a company-sponsored share buyback.

US-based Sequoia Capital was one of Axtria's early investors, having provided the company $2.5 million in a Series-A round back in 2010, according to data on Tracxn. Prior to the investment by Kedaara Capital, the company had last raised $150 million from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities in 2021, which valued the company at $850 million. The company was last valued at over $1 billion in 2021, according to Tracxn.

“We are delighted to support Axtria’s talented workforce as they continue to scale as a trusted partner, helping life sciences companies harness the power of technology and Agentic AI,” said Sunish Sharma, founder and managing partner at Kedaara Capital, in a prepared statement.

Notably, this is Kedaara Capital's second investment in an AI and data analytics company this year. In January, it invested over $350 million in Impetus Technologies, a data analytics and AI solutions company that caters to Fortune 500 companies in the US and Europe. One of the focuses of the investment was to grow the company's generative AI and analytics business lines. The investment in Axtria is their second investment in an AI and data analytics company. US-based Axtria's focus with its AI, data analytics and cloud offerings is on the life sciences industry.

So far this year, Kedaara Capital's investments include a $60 million investment in payments platform Juspay and co-leading a $200 million Series F round alongside Wellington in logistics service provider Porter. In July, it fully exited its stake in affordable housing finance company Aavas Financiers, in which it first invested ₹800 crore back in 2023.

Larger portfolio

Some of the PE firm's significant investments include a ₹$1,500 crore investment in ASG Eye Hospitals in 2022, a $229 million Series D in SaaS fintech player Perfios, and a stake in edtech provider K12 Techno Services.

It's worth pointing out that interest in agentic AI has been steadily growing worldwide. The technology is an offshoot of generative AI, one that can adapt and learn on its own, requiring minimal human intervention. Usually built for specific repeatable tasks, agentic AI has found a lot of use in customer service and invoicing.

Investors haven't shied away either, pumping in hundreds of millions of dollars into such companies. Earlier this year, health-tech startup Innovaccer raised $275 million from a clutch of investors including B Capital Group, Banner Health, Danaher Ventures, Generation IM, Kaiser Permanente and Microsoft's venture investing arm, M12. Innovaccer's offerings are mainly focused on providing a data platform that unifies patient data. However, in recent years, the company has developed AI offerings like Sara AI, which automates repetitive tasks and can provide insights from large volumes of medical data.

Even AI behemoths like OpenAI and Anthropic have launched tools to help developers build their own AI agents on their platforms.

Back home in India, agentic AI startup Atomicwork raised a $25 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Blume Ventures and Peak XV. The company's agentic AI platform is focused on automating routine processes, specifically for IT teams within enterprises.