SUMMARY
OYO’s top executives will be pooling their funds for investing in early-stage startups
Angel investments would be in individual capacity, but through the new company
The move is similar to other angel funds set up by prominent startup founders in India
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After Snapdeal cofounders, OYO’s top executives, including founder Ritesh Agarwal, have decided to pool their individual angel investments into a limited liability partnership firm Raaga Partners LLP.
By pooling the angel investment under one banner, OYO executives will be able to collectively fund early-stage startups in their individual capacity. According to the ET report, the funding would not have any connection to OYO, but will only be limited to the individual executives. Responding to ET’s query, Agarwal neither confirmed or denied the development.
Previously, Agarwal had transferred his 155 shares in app-based office bus service provider Shuttl to Raaga Partners in November 2018, according to Paper.vc. The business intelligence platform also noted that OYO executives Abhishek Gupta is a designated partner at Raaga Partners.
Snapdeal cofounders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal had adopted a similar strategy to invest in seed and early-stage startups in their personal capacity. The duo set up an investment vehicle Titan Capital earlier this year, which claims to have invested in 70 startups and has a ticket size of $100K-$500K.
Following the exit from Freecharge, cofounders Sandeep Tandon and Kunal Shah also set up Whiteboard Capital to manage their investments.
Early Stage Investment In India
As Indian startups continue to mature, investors from all around the globe have kept a close eye on them. Various venture capital firms and other big players like Chiratae Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Tencent, among others have been investing in Indian startups aggressively.
According to DataLabs by Inc42, seed stage startups accounted for 53.12% or 2,419 deals in the Indian startup ecosystem from 2014 to H12019. However, the seed stage funding to the total amount of funding was just 2.47% or $1.26 Bn, due to the smaller ticket size.
The report also pointed out that prior to the introduction of the angel tax, India’s seed stage investment witnessed a growth of 85.59%. But the growth fell to 46% in 2018 after the angel tax was introduced, India can expect to see the same growth once again as DPIIT has also rolled out relaxation for registered startups.
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