India’s largest and oldest angel investor group, Indian Angel Network (IAN), has announced a program to fund 24 start ups in the mobile and Internet space with up to Rs 75 lakhs each.
An ‘angel’ network is one that typically comes in even before the firm is in a position to seek venture capital. ‘Angels’ are more involved in guiding the entrepreneur than VCs and are more flexible in their engagement.
IAN is India’s largest organization of angel investors – mostly ex-entrepreneurs or high-flying corporate executives who want to engage in their passion for entrepreneurship.
It has already invested in 25 companies over the last several years and the new program reflects a major scaling up of its activities. It said the new program is a response to the “overwhelming number of requests for funding in the pre angel funding stage from entrepreneurs in the Mobile and Internet products and services.”
Entrepreneurs have to send in their business plans to info@indianangelnetwork.com.
“A set of short listed firms from among the business plans will be invited to attend a half day workshop with Angel Investors from IAN as well as experts at New Delhi on November 12, 2011. Post this workshop the start ups will get a chance to present their plans for funding and network with IAN Angel Investors,” IAN said.
“To add value to these new ventures, IAN members–comprising successful entrepreneurs and CEOs–would offer valuable mentoring support and participate in helping build businesses, refining the product strategy and shaping growth of the new companies early on,” it added.
IAN has over 170 members including Jerry Rao, Saurabh Srivastava, Pramod Bhasin, Raman Roy, Rajan Anandan, Rehan Yar Khan, Harish Mehta, Rajiv Luthra, Pradeep Gupta, Sunil Munjal, Arvind Singhal and institutions such as IBM, SIDBI, Spice Televentures, Intel.
IAN’s Department of Science and Technology supported Incubator is currently incubating over two dozen start ups with select angel investors mentoring them. Along with other services (viz. IT, HR, Marketing, Small Funding) of the IAN Incubator, the start-up gets help in re-defining the proposition to create an investable business for an angel investor.
A few of the companies in which IAN has made investments include Druva and InnovizeTech Software from Pune; Kwench, a Library solutions start up, Karmic Life Sciences, an oncology focused CRO, Jigsee, a mobile video streaming company for feature phones, Groffr, a real estate group buying pioneer from Mumbai; an embedded software too developers Vyavaya from Belgaum, Hungry Zone in Bangalore and TaxSpanner and Vienova in Delhi