Top 7 Early-Stage Angels for Startups

BENGALURU: The startup ecosystem is bringing entrepreneurs and venture capitalist (VC) firms together to nourish the early stage of a company with incubation facilities, seed funding, and much more. Xeler8, a startup analytics and deal sourcing platform, has analyzed the portfolios and deal activities between entrepreneur and investor, of Indian VC firms revealing  a list of seven VCs with a cumulative investment of more than $1.5 Bn in over 412 Indian startups, reports NDTV Gadgets360.

The most prolific VC firms are Helion Ventures and Blume Ventures with over a hundred deals each, followed by Indian Angel Network, Kalaari Capital, Ventureast, Artha Ventures and Kae Capital.

1) Helion Ventures has made 110 deals in 75 startups and operates a $605 million, early to mid-stage fund in the fields of outsourcing, Internet, mobile, healthcare, education and financial services. The most capitalized startups in its portfolio are e-commerce marketplace—Shopclues, grocery delivery service—Bigbasket, real-estate aggregator—Housing.com, and two EdTech firms - Toppr, and Simplilearn. Helion’s biggest exits—a strategy to end investment on a startup, include Makemytrip, TaxiForSure and RedBus. Flipkart had acquired its portfolio company Letsbuy in February 2012, while Mahindra Group had acquired Babyoye in early 2015.

2) Blume Ventures launched has invested in 83 startups till date. Their portfolio comprises of warehouse automation player—GreyOrange, event booking platform—Explara, and hyper local delivery service—Roadrunnr. The firm aims to invest in a dozen startups a year from the new fund for the next three years, and make seed investments in the range of half a million dollars. The firm is looking for startups that are Blu Swans—businesses that can scale to 1,000 Crores or more in valuation. When talking about exits, Blume had 12 exits till date, out of which five were in 2015 - IndianStage (acquired by Explara), 1Click (acquired by FreshDesk), Promptec (acquired by Havells), and ZipDial (acquired by Twitter).

3) Indian Angel Network, a syndicate of over 400 angel investors in the country, has invested in 88 companies since its inception in 2006. The VC has seen three exits— Jigsee, mobile video streaming company acquired by Vuclip, clinical research company Karmic Life Sciences, acquired by Cliantha Research, and PeelWorks, which raised $2 Mn in Series A funding from Inventus, and IDG Ventures.

4) Kalaari Capital, a Bengaluru-based VC raised three venture funds tallying to $650 Mn. Few of Kalaari Capital’s notable investments include e-commerce companies like Snapdeal, and Urban Ladder, edutech company like Simplilearn, and personal assistant app Haptik. Its exits in India include Myntra, which was acquired by Flipkart in May 2014, and mobile video delivery platform Apalya, which was acquired by Arre, a digital media brand.

5) Ventureast, one of the oldest VC firms has made over 70 investments which include Portea Medical, Little Eye Labs and Loylty Rewardz. But, later in 2014-15, Little Eye Labs was acquired by Facebook , and Loylty Rewardz by Billdesk.

6) Artha Ventures has invested in 43 startups, which includes Oyo Rooms, Siftr, Confirmtkt, and Instasafe.

7) Mumbai-based Kae Capital raised a second fund of $30 million in February 2016, and has invested in 33 startups till date.

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