Indian Angel Network (IAN) on Thursday launched a Rs 1,000 crore fund—IAN Alpha Fund—which will look to invest in sectors such as cleantech and environment, healthtech and agritech, among others.
Led by Padmaja Ruparel, Senior Managing Partner of IAN Alpha Fund, the Sebi-registered Cat II VC fund is aligned with the platform's vision of investing in 500 start-ups, with Rs 5,000 crore and creating 5,00,000 jobs, IAN said in a statement.
IAN is the largest platform for seed and early-age investments.
"The platform has launched the IAN Alpha Fund, a Sebi Registered Cat II VC fund with a fund corpus of Rs 1,000 crore. This is the second in the series of IAN Funds," the statement said.
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The fund looks to invest in companies with both top and bottom lines OR IP focused, it added.
Apart from tier I, the fund has access to tier 2 and 3 entrepreneurs who are solving real problems faced by a large number of people, it said. Therefore, it is looking to invest in cleantech and environment, healthtech, agritech, edutech, fintech, and emerging sectors with cheque sizes ranging from $1 million to $5 million, along with co-investors.
The fund's investment thesis is to invest in start-ups with high quality founders who are solving real problems for a large customer base and are leveraging technology and innovative business models to scale quickly, it said.
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The platform has seeded and bred companies which at present have a market valuation of over $9 billion and includes three unicorns and five soonicorns in its portfolio of over 200 companies, according to the statement.
The latest fund is the second one launched by the platform, after the rollout of its maiden VC fund, IAN Fund 1, as per the platform. "IAN has continued to innovate by launching a VC fund (IAN Fund 1) along with the Angel Group to provide a seamless platform for seed and early-stage investing.
"The launch of the IAN Alpha Fund is the logical evolution of our desire to provide quality entrepreneurs with money, mentoring and market access," Saurabh Srivastava, co-Founder of IAN, said.
With an investment of about Rs 900 crore, the IAN platform has catalysed investments of Rs 18,000 crore and created over 80,000 jobs, the statement added.
"This (fund) will, in fact, leverage and garner benefits from IAN's global network, domain experts and high-quality mentors to help the partners build another high-return potential portfolio. We will be keen on investing in innovative ideas that have the capacity to generate profits and aim to solve real-world problems," said Ruparel of IAN Alpha Fund.
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