Indian Angel Network (IAN), a network of individual early-stage investors, has reached the final close of its maiden venture capital fund at INR 375 crore, a senior executive said. The fund will invest in startups and provide strategic mentorship and market access to entrepreneurs.

The IAN Fund is backed by institutional investors such as Small Industries Development Bank of India’s fund of funds, IIFL Holdings, Yes Bank, Max India, impact investment firm Gray Matters Capital and Hyundai. Kris Gopalakrishnan, Sunil Munjal, Rajan Anandan, Kanwal Rekhi, Vikram Gandhi and Jerry Rao, too have contributed to the fund in individual capacity. “For a

startup, funding delayed is funding denied. We realised that one of the big gaps in angel funding was
that a lot of startups faced problems in scaling up their businesses and raising further capital, after the first round of funding. As IAN Fund, we want to provide a platform for startups to get mentoring and early-stage funding so that they can build a team and scale up, as we make sure they don’t fall over the brink," said Padmaja Ruparel, founding partner of the IAN Fund, over the phone.
The fund can invest between INR 25 lakh and INR 50 crore in each opportunity, along with other co-investors. While the fund is sector-agnostic, it will focus on investing in startups within healthcare, agritech, fintech, cybersecurity, edutech, hardware products, consumer focused, and deep technology firms. “We will continue to remain sector-agnostic and will invest in companies across geographies, which are well-differentiated and catering to a unique need for mass markets," said Ruparel.

Having achieved its first close at INR 175 crore in 2017, the IAN fund has, so far, deployed about INR 150 crore across 40 startups. Its portfolio includes companies such as SmartVizs, a virtual reality platform for the building industry, education financing firm Propelld, pregnancy health assistant PregBuddy, fruits and vegetables delivery startup Freshworld and beer company Coolberg.