Seed and early-stage investment platform Indian Angel Network (IAN) on Monday announced the first close of its second fund — IAN Alpha Fund — at $42 million (Rs 355 crore).
Registered with Sebi under AIF Category II, the second fund is eyeing a corpus of $119 million (Rs 1,000 crore) in the final close. Investors so far in the fund include SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India), SRI Fund, and several investors from IAN Fund I.
The fund will explore opportunities in diverse sectors such as fintech, healthtech, renewable energy, deeptech, agritech, medtech, hardware and electronics, manufacturing, Web3, metaverse, industry 4.0, SaaS, D2C, and other domains, IAN said in a statement.
“We intend to not only focus on India’s metros to harness but also have a keen eye on tier 2 and 3 cities, where untapped potential and creativity abound and where we have already had some great successes. Female founders will also be an area of focus,” said Padmaja Ruparel, IAN co-founder and Senior Managing Partner of the IAN Alpha Fund.
The IAN Alpa Fund will further the IAN Group’s mission to invest Rs 5,000 crore in 500 startups to create 500,000 jobs and bring Indian innovation to global markets, the statement added. It will leverage the success of the IAN Angel Platform and IAN Fund 1, which raised Rs 375 crore in the final close in 2018, of which 74% has been invested so far.
The Fund 1 portfolio includes shared mobility startup Zypp Electric, marketing automation software WebEngage, online furniture platform WoodenStreet, tele-health platform Truemeds, education-focused fintech platform Propelld, and drone platform company Skylark Drones.
At the group level, IAN has so far invested Rs 900 crore in over 250 startups, which are currently valued at over $9 billion.