Indian Angel Network (IAN) has attained the first close of its eponymous IAN Fund at Rs 175 crore (around $27 million), a company statement said.
In February, VCCircle had exclusively reported that IAN had made the first close for its fund. An internal email reviewed by VCCircle showed that IAN had received a commitment of Rs 200 crore. The fund also has a green shoe option of Rs 100 crore.
Of the total corpus, a fifth has been earmarked for co-investment, while almost two-thirds will be allocated for subsequent rounds at investee companies. The rest of the money will be deployed at firms where IAN members are not investors. Together, IAN and the IAN Fund (plus co-investors) would invest approximately Rs 1,500 crore in 160 odd companies over the next four years.
The Rs 350 crore fund will invest in sectors including healthcare and medical devices, software as a service, marketplaces, fintech, big data, artificial intelligence, and hardware.
The fund counts Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder and former chief executive of Infosys, Sunil Munjal, joint managing director at Hero Corp, and Dr Devi Shetty, founder and chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya as part of its advisory committee.
“With this fund, IAN is upping the game, supporting entrepreneurs from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 30 crore, co-investing with other VCs. Our goal is to distribute the money as efficiently as possible to get innovators through the most challenging early stages of funding,†said Saurabh Srivastava, chairman and co-founder at IAN, in the press note.
IAN’s key investments include mobile advertising platform PayTunes, city lifestyle guide Little Black Book, robotic education startup Robotics Works, fashion app Styledotme, AI startup Staqu and inter-city service provider One Way Cab. In January, IAN recently exited Bangalore-based security solutions provider InstaSafe Technologies Pvt. Ltd., where it had invested in August 2015.
Nearly 26 venture funds were established in India last year, according to data from VCCEdge, the data research platform of News Corp VCCircle. Early-stage funds launched last year include Ideaspring Capital, WaterBridge Ventures, Pravega Ventures and Stellaris Venture Partners, among others.
