A platform for seed and early-age investing, Indian Angel Network (IAN) on October 20 said it launched the IAN Alpha Fund, a SEBI-registered (Securities and Exchange Board of India) category two venture capital fund of Rs 1,000 crore. IAN said that the new fund is the second in the series of its funds.
In a statement, IAN said the new fund is looking to invest in cleantech and environment, healthtech, agritech, edtech, fintech, and emerging sectors like industry 4.0, spacetech, web 3, and robotics. The fund said the cheque sizes will range from $1 to 5 million, along with co-investors.
Founded in 2006 by Padmaja Ruparel, Raman Roy, and Saurabh Srivastava, IAN helps in the investment of private wealth into seeding and growing startups in the country. The network said its portfolio contains high-valued startups including unicorns, soonicorns, and over 200 other companies.
Ruparel, who is also the senior managing partner of IAN, will lead the IAN Alpha Fund. She said, “(With IAN Alpha Fund)... we will be keen on investing in innovative ideas that have the capacity to generate profits and aim to solve real-world problems.”
IAN said the new IAN Alpha Fund will invest in startups with high-quality founders solving problems for a large customer base, leveraging technology and models to scale quickly.
“With IAN Alpha Fund, entrepreneurs can access larger series A round cheques from IAN. For us, the idea is to support the ventures not only from tier one cities but even from tier two and three areas that are solving real-world problems at large,” said Vinod Keni, managing partner, IAN Alpha Fund.
The fund said industrial experts Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys; Sunil Munjal, chairman and managing director (MD), Hero Mindmine & Hero Corporate Services; and CP Gurnani, MD and chief executive officer of Tech Mahindra are a part of its advisory board.
IAN said IAN Alpha Fund’s investment committee includes IAN co-founder Srivastava, who was also the chairman of NASSCOM and IVCA; Ajai Chowdhry, founder of HCL; and Pravin Rao, who recently retired from Infosys as the chief operating officer.
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