Kunal Shah, Cred's founder, and chief executive officer (CEO) retained his title as the Shah of angel investing in 2022. Shah once again topped the list of angel investors funding the most deals in a year, according to Venture Intelligence data, with 67 investments this year.
However, Shah appeared to be holding back on investments in comparison to last year, when he participated in about 96 deals. This comes as private equity and venture capital funding to the startup system has dried up due to a prolonged funding winter. Notably, early-stage deals increased at an unprecedented rate this year, while late-stage deals decreased by half year on year.
Some of Shah's notable investments include the edtech unicorn Unacademy, the unicorn Mensa Brands founded by Ananth Narayanan, the bike taxi platform Rapido, and the logistics aggregator Shiprocket.
Shah is closely followed this year by Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Both Bahl and Bansal slowed their investment pace compared to last year, signing about 34 and 30 deals, respectively. Last year, both Bahl and Bansal invested in 64 deals.
The Snapdeal co-founders were followed by Aman Gupta, founder, and chief marketing officer (CMO) of Boat and Shark Tank India judge. Gupta, a newcomer to the list, increased his investments from seven in 2021 to 16 this year.
Others in the top ten include Force Ventures' Karthik Bhat, DoorDash's Gokul Rajaram, Mamaearth's Varun Alagh, and OYO's Maninder Gulati.
The list also included Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon, who increased his investment activity from three deals last year to 15 in 2022.
Sujeet Kumar of Udaan maintained his position in the top 10 this year, but his investments decreased from 22 in 2021 to 15 this year.
How did 2021’s super angels fare this year?
Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com and People Group, who was among the top 10 angel investors last year, did not make it to the list this year, despite an increase in deal count from six in 2021 to nine this year.
Unacademy's Gaurav Munjal and Jupiter's Jitendra Gupta's investment activity, on the other hand, fell significantly, keeping them off the list this year. Munjal's investments decreased from 18 to eight this year, while Gupta only made five deals compared to 18 in 2021.
Moneycontrol recently reported that Gupta's Jupiter, which was last valued at more than $710 million (roughly Rs 5,800 crore), earned only Rs 40 lakh ($48,000) in operating revenue in its second full year of operations.
Here is the performance of last year's super angels in 2022:
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