IAN Raises $33.2 Mn For Its Maiden Fund

Indian Angel Network (IAN) has reportedly raised more than $33.22 Mn (INR 227 Cr) for its maiden fund launched in April 2017.

The company had set a total target of $51.22 Mn (INR 350 Cr) but this could be overshot by $14.63 Mn (INR 100 Cr). The report cited IAN founding partner Padmaja Ruparel as stating that IAN plans to close the fundraising in the next two quarters.

Institutional investors like India Infoline, Yes Bank, Max Group, Grey Matters Capital, and Hyundai participated in the fundraising, along with retail investors Kris Gopalakrishnan, Kanwal Rekhi, and others.

Ruparel said that with this fund, IAN aims to create a common platform where entrepreneurs can raise amounts ranging from $36,587 (INR 25 lakh) to $7.31 Mn (INR 50 Cr) for all kinds of business requirements.

An email query sent to IAN didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication.

IAN has already invested in 15 startups through the maiden fund. It targets to invest around $731.72 Mn (INR 5,000 Cr) over the next 10 years across 500 companies and help create around 50,000 jobs in the process.

At the time of the launch of its maiden fund, IAN had stated that it will deploy the maiden fund to invest in early-stage startups and to make follow-on investments via its angel network.

Ruparel had at that time told Inc42 that the fund is sector-agnostic and would specifically focus on areas such as SaaS, marketplaces, fintech, big data, artificial intelligence, and hardware. The firm will also use the fund to co-invest with other venture capital firms in their domain areas.

The plan was to deploy the funds over a four-year period in around 160 companies.  The average ticket size of the fund would range between $77K to $4 Mn.

IAN was launched in 2006 and usually aims at investing up to $1 Mn, with an average ticket size of about $400K-$600K, and exiting in a three-five year period through a strategic sale. It is a SEBI-registered early-stage fund with about 470 investors from 11 countries.

Till date, it has backed up to 130 companies across 17 sectors. It is also a registered an alternative investment fund (AIF) under the Startup India investment scheme with a fund corpus of $7.8 Mn (INR 50 Cr).

In an official statement earlier, IAN had claimed that it has made a collective investment of $32 Mn in around 60 deals over the last three financial years, from 2014-2017.

Its portfolio includes companies such as Square Plums Technologies, FindMyStay, Protinus Fashion Networking Pvt. Ltd, Little Black Book, One Way Cab, Wiwigo, Roast Media Pvt Ltd, and more.

In January, IAN had announced to raise $38 Mn funding from Indian as well as overseas markets to fuel the second round of funding for its $70 Mn Fund-I.

According to the Inc42 Tech Startup Funding report 2017, the highest number of deals raised funding at the Seed level, with $159 Mn being invested in 259 deals in H1 2017. This figure was followed by growth-stage ($938 Mn across 118 deals), late-stage ($4 Bn across 38 deals), and bridge-stage funding ($36 Mn across 33 deals).

Further, the Inc42 Tech Startup Funding report for Q1 2018 revealed that the trend of seed funding crunch seems to be making a fair recovery in Q1 2018. Although the number of deals in seed stage is still 18% lower than that of Q1 2017, the numbers have increased by 43% as compared to Q4 2017.

With IAN ready to boost early-stage startups, the boost in funding is bound to help several startups from idea to product stage etc.

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