How AngelList helps Indian startups raise capital
AngelList is the definitive platform for startup success. By removing friction in fundraising, recruiting and launching — we enable founders to focus on what matters the most — building impact worthy companies.
As part of our launch in India, we pioneered many new concepts for this exciting startup ecosystem — pooling of angel capital into a single cap-table cheque for companies, access to strategic angels using our technology infrastructure and incentives for syndicate leads to open up their private deals.
Since early 2018, we’ve enabled syndicate leads like Better Capital, First Cheque, Ramakant Sharma and Jitendra Gupta to deliver meaningful capital, very early on, to high-growth Indian startups like Open Bank, BharatPe, DealShare and more. These companies have gone on to raise large follow-ons from reputed venture firms like Sequoia Capital India, Matrix Partners India, Tiger Global and more.
We leveraged AngelList’s global tech stack that has invested over $1B into global startups. Syndicate leads could now selectively invite their investor network into their single-company pop-up SPVs (special purpose vehicles).
How do syndicates work
Syndicates allow operator-angels to invest in other founders. Syndicates give them access to capital, advice and infrastructure, to invest in companies they have conviction in, while maintaining their respective day jobs. Now they can use AngelList’s tech platform to write larger single cheques to companies, earn a carried interest (venture fund manager’s incentive) and offload the back office activities to AngelList India.
As we’ve grown to be the infrastructure of choice for founders and investors in India, we’ve come across exciting new use-cases— syndicates acting as private SPVs for a set of already committed founders or funds wanting sidecar vehicles to allow strategic angels from a particular sector take part in that opportunity or angel investors willing to share a pro-rata opportunity from their existing portfolio.
AngelList India syndicates for founders
AngelList India works best when a syndicate lead is able to build conviction around a particular opportunity, convince the founder to give an allocation in an ongoing investment round so that he/she can invite backers from their network and/or invite ‘The Collective’ to invest into their syndicate. Some of our most active syndicate leads are listed on this page.
AngelList India syndicates have never cost anything to the founders but provides them multiple benefits like clean cap-table, faster closures, multiple value-add angels and no angel-tax worries. These issues might be easy to ignore at the earliest days of starting up but quickly snowball into becoming deal breakers in future fundraising. Imagine having to negotiate terms with a large set of investors or taking wet signatures from a set of investors of various cheque sizes.
Every bit of information for the round is protected by privacy-first design principles. No material information is shared with non-invited or unaccredited (regulatory measure of sophistication) investor backers.
AngelList India’s family of founders
Our Indian family has grown rapidly in a very short time to have over 70 great founders. This has helped founders of diverse backgrounds, experiences and skills to help each other when it’s needed the most. Amongst other things, this peer group has referred candidates, made introductions to follow-on investors, shared strategic business advice and formed partnerships.
We’ve enabled syndicates to invest in their areas of expertise and interest. This means having a portfolio that has cult coffee chains like Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters and Third Wave Coffee, leading craft gin distillery of India producing Stranger & Sons and micro-mobility startups like Yulu Bikes and OYE Rickshaw. Founders shouldn’t box syndicate leads under one broad category of just being technology investors.
Just to give you a sense of our diverse portfolio — FinTech takes the cake with 21%, Consumer comes second with 16% and e-Commerce, AgriTech, Transport are neck-to-neck at 7% each. We’ve got an interesting mix of SpaceTech and Content companies in there too.
The Collective brings more capital and advice
To democratise access to institutional capital for entrepreneurs, we brought together the best minds in venture and entrepreneurship from Matrix Partners India, Kalaari Capital, Beenext, DST Global, Falcon Edge and more to form ‘The Collective’. ‘The Collective’ works as a regular venture fund and having a cheque from it in a company’s round means coming in front of the best institutions, without signal, at once. Fundraising entrepreneurs can choose to pitch to ‘The Collective’ fund for investment through syndicate leads or by applying directly through its page.
Disclosures
Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Examples of past investments supported through AngelList are purely for illustrative purposes. An investment in startups, involves a high degree of risk and is suitable only for sophisticated and qualified accredited investors. Neither Venture Hacks Inc (“VentureHacks”) nor AngelList India LLP is a stock exchange recognised by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (“SEBI”) under the Securities Contract (Regulations) Act, 1956. The Platform (www.angel.co/india) is not a fundraising platform. The Platform only registers the Eligible Angel Investors and target companies and allows them to interact with each other in a restricted environment. No securities are offered by any target company on the Platform. The Platform merely markets the operations of its India centric fund (hereinafter referred to as “India Fund”), duly registered with SEBI as an Angel Fund having registration number IN/AIF1/17–18/0504. The India Fund solicits commitments from Eligible Angel Investors directly and through AL Access Trust. Units of the India Fund or of AL Access Trust are not traded on any stock exchange recognised by SEBI.
