Premji Invest eyes $50-$70 million investment in Canva

Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji. Premji Invest is a Azim Premji's investment arm.

Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji’s fund Premji Invest may invest $50-$70 million in Australian graphic design platform Canva, according to sources familiar with the development.

This is part of Canva’s recent secondary market sale, where shares worth $1.6 billion changed hands between existing and new shareholders, at a valuation of $26 billion. Premji Invest may pick up shares tendered by employees in the sale.

Premji’s AI bets

“$50-$70 million at a valuation of $26 billion for a company that will IPO in two years is a good deal. This is also a bet on the booming creator ecosystem, where Canva has an edge,” one of the sources cited above said.

A second person familiar with the fund’s thinking said it is increasingly looking at technology bets in the US, as it looks to capitalise on the generative artificial intelligence (AI) boom, and comes weeks after it invested in an American AI firm Hippocratic AI.

Premji Invest and Canva said they will not be commenting on this story.

Hippocratic AI

Last month, Premji Invest co-led Hippocratic AI’s $53 million Series A round, with investors such as General Catalyst, Memorial Hermann Health System and SV Angel. Hippocratic AI is building specialised voice-enabled generative AI agents for healthcare that communicates with patients and collects patient information, conducts follow-ups, executes tasks that involve clinical procedures.

“In the world of AI, we have shied away from applications that are building thin layers on top of large model providers. We’ve observed a ‘gap to the LLM app’ — building specialized vertical applications is exceptionally difficult. Data selection, data curation, model selection, task-specific training/RLHF, and elimination of hallucination are some examples of prominent issues that every entrepreneur needs to solve,” the fund said in a Medium post while talking about the Hippocratic investment.

Premji Invest and Canva

Premji Invest is one of India’s largest single investor funds. It has assets under management (AUM) of $14.3 billion, with investments in India and the US. It invests across asset class- private equity, venture capital, public markets, liquid, and fund of funds. Some of its startup bets in India include Lenskart, Firstcry, Purplle and The Sleep Company. It is also an investor in US-based pharma firm Moderna.

India is one of the fastest growing markets for Canva and the company will continue investing heavily in this region, co-founder and COO Clifford Obrecht said in October 2023, adding that the country also has one of the largest creator communities on Facebook. He was speaking at the launch of Canva’s end-to-end AI enabled offerings under ‘Magic Studio’.

Canva recently acquired Affinity’s creative software suite, pitting itself directly against design software giant Adobe. Affinity Designer, Photo and Publishers have features like Adobe’s Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign software.