LetsVenture on Thursday said it has launched LV Fuel, which is an investment syndicate comprising of founders from the early-stage investment platform's portfolio companies to bet on new entrepreneurs.
LV Fuel will enable LetsVenture founders to give back to the ecosystem via capital, experience and skills and empower new founders from idea to scale up stages, said LetsVenture in a statement.
LV Fuel currently has a cohort of over 40 founders, and it aims to have more than 200 founder investors in the next two years, it added.
Founders part of LV Fuel will invest $30,000-$2 million in startup across sectors and stages, it added. It aims to invest in at least 20 startups initially and will look to allocate at least 20% of the investments towards women entrepreneurs and founders from smaller towns and cities.
LetsVenture has a portfolio of over 350 companies including fintech firm Khatabook, social commerce platform Trell, and edtech startup Classplus.
"Our goal to make private market investing easy and accessible remains key to all our initiatives," said Shanti Mohan, co-founder and CEO, LetsVenture, "Having a founder be part of the captable is the best capital a new founder can ask for - the empathy, understanding and friendship is extremely invaluable," she added.
Earlier this month, Trica, a new business entity of LetsVenture, raised $3 million (Rs 22.33 crore) as part of its seed funding round from a clutch of institutional and individual investors including venture capital firm Accel and Kunal Shah, founder of Cred. Trica is a platform for equity management and private market investments.
Earlier in January, N+1 Capital, a revenue-based capital fund, had roped in LetsVenture as the founding venture partner for its debut vehicle that seeks to raise $100 million (Rs 730 crore), including a greenshoe option of $25 million (Rs 182 crore).
Following the launch of Trica, LetsVenture said that Trica is now the venture partner to N+1 Capital .
LetsVenture, founded in 2013, will continue to focus on angel investing and early-stage companies, it added. In 2018, LetsVenture had also announced the launch of its own open-ended angel fund.
It's not uncommon for founders of matured startups to invest in early-stage startups in their individual capacity. For instance, Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have been actively investing in startups through their investment firm Titan Capital. Kunal Shah, Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, and founders of other heavily funded startups such as Udaan and Unacademy have also been making early-stage bets.
