Anil Joshi, who previously headed Mumbai Angels network, is mulling to raise $25 million for a new fund which would make pre-Series A investments in tech startups, as per a report by Mint quoting Joshi.
The proposed fund will invest in 15-20 companies with the investment size in the $300,000 to $2 million range.
Joshi had joined Mumbai Angels as a vice president in July 2010 and handled operations including deal sourcing and due diligence. In January 2012, he bacame the president of the angel investors network. He was also involved with Bangalore Angels.
Before joining Mumbai Angels, Joshi had worked with Mumbai-based rayon filament yarn producer Century Rayon and Artheon Electronics. He left Mumbai Angels a couple of months back.
Joshi’s proposed fund would seek to bridge the funding gap faced by startups after raising angel or seed round and before getting VC firms to shell out more money in a Series A round.
Although most VC firms invest first in a Series A round, over the last 2-3 years a bunch of angel and seed funds have emerged, who back startups with small token of institutional funding. These apart, some larger VC firms have also been participating in seed rounds before putting larger sums of money.
In the past another Sasha Mirchandani, an angel investor himself and co-founder of Mumbai Angels, also formed an early stage investment fund under Kae Capital.
Joshi’s fund would add to a string of new early stage funds who have raised money to back Indian startups.