Startup enabler D2C Insider said Wednesday it has marked the first close of its first fund to invest in early-stage consumer startups.
The Super Angels Fund has a target corpus of Rs 25 crore and hit the first close at Rs 10 crore, D2C Insider said in a statement.
D2C Insider said it has a network of over 10,000 startup founders in the direct-to-consumer space. The fund plans to deploy the corpus across 20-25 early-stage startups in the pre-seed/seed stages with average cheque sizes of Rs 1 crore.
The cohort has already invested in nine D2C startups: Basil, PiknDel, Samosa Party, Crest, Assembly, Futwork, The Solved Skin, Business On Bot and Snackible.
“We are committed to nurturing these disruptors and helping them scale towards our broader vision of producing global brands out of India in the next decade,” said Abhishek Shah, founder of D2C Insider.
The fund is backed by over 50 founders, including Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl. Other backers of the fund include Aneesh Seth, former chief executive officer of Dr Sheth’s; Vedang Patel, co-founder of apparel brand Souled Store; Soumya Kant, co-founder of intimate wear brand Clovia; and Vivek Biyani, founder of D2C retail chain Broadway.
Explaining the structure of the “operator fund”, a spokesperson for D2C Insider told VCCircle that the network has been providing mentorship to startups already. “Now, companies will make their pitches to the D2C panel and there will be a selection. There will be a mentorship for three months and at the end of it, the selected companies will get the funds.”
D2C Insider began as a community on a social networking app in 2019. It has now grown to 3,000 brand founders, over 500 enabler-founders and over 500 investors. The D2C Insider website says nearly 60% of its D2C brands that pitch on the reality show Shark Tank are part of their community.
D2C Insider counts V3 Ventures’ Arjun Vaidya, Assembly’s Aditya Khanna, BoAt’s Aman Gupta, Mamaearth’s Gazhal Alagh, The Man Company’s Hitesh Dhingra, Wow Skin’s Manish Chowdhary, mCaffein’s Tarun Sharma, and The MomsCo’s Mohit Sadaani among its founding members.