AngelPrime, a seed stage venture capital fund has announced that it has raised about $47 Mn (INR 300 Cr.) for a new seed stage fund. The investment was lead by Social+Capital partnership, a capital firm along with several institutional investors from Silicon Valley, New York, Hong Kong, Europe and Singapore also participating.
With the, AngelPrime also announced that they are now rebranding them as Prime Venture Partners.
The fund will keep on investing in the seed stage and additionally, will also earmark funds for upcoming rounds. The company feels that the name ‘Prime Venture Partners’ resonates with the company better.
Prime ventures Partners will continue to invest in a number of Startups every year and will extend its support to the entrepreneurs with business and product strategy, hiring, partnerships, marketing, finance and will also go an extra mile and help them to raise subsequent capital.
Prime Venture Partners is a Bangalore-based seed fund led by serial entrepreneurs Sanjay Swamy, Shripati Acharya and Amit Somani.
We had a chat with Amit Somani managing partner, Prime Venture Partners and here are the excerpts of the same.
Inc42: How does Angel Prime intend to channelise the funds, are you planning to diversify drastically?
Amit Somani: No we are still going to stick to our core business of funding Financial Tech and Consumer Internet businesses. We stick to the philosophy of investing only in the businesses we understand about else it will not be fair either for us or for the startup we invest in.
Inc42: What is your opinion about the rapid round of frenzied investments in the industry?
Amit Somani: Well it is both way around, in Bangalore itself their are more than 2750 startups and not all of them are funded. In fact I have come across several good ideas that have not been funded, that being said, I would also agree that some of the startups are being evaluation are overkill.
Inc42: What do concentrate on while investing in an startup. Customer Traction or Innovation in the business?
Amit Somani: Strangely enough, we have always been concentrating on the factor of innovation in the product. This is something that has paid us back well and if you take a look our company’s portfolio we have funded startups with very unique value proposition.
Prime Venture has invested companies like ZipDial(acquired by Twitter), Ezetap, Smart Owner, Synup, happay and Vidgyor. It funds companies to help build disruptive companies out of India and address a gap in the Indian Startup ecosystem.
