Initiatives to ease the path for startups & investors

The path to investment is often full of obstacles for startups as well as investors. Efforts are on to make that path smooth so that both can access each other and benefit.

In February, Inflection Point Ventures launched a Main Bhi Angel (MBA) initiative to make startup investing more accessible for professionals of all ages. Under MBA, the investment size in startups has brought down to Rs 1,00,000 from the current minimum ticket size of Rs 2.5 lakhs.

The initiative aims to develop startup investing as an asset class among the working professionals ranging from Genz, millennials and experienced corporate workforce.

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In March, Welspun One, an integrated fund and development management platform focused on creating Grade A warehousing and industrial real estate, launched its Investor portal, a first of its kind initiative in the Indian private equity space.

The investor portal is a web-based service which an investor can access using a PAN number and OTP based login. Once logged in, the portal provides the investor with relevant information with regard to his investment all in one place, anytime and at the click of a button. The portal is organized in to two key sections- a document repository and the investment and portfolio dashboard.

As a fund manager, our fiduciary duty to our investors is paramount and ensuring that our investors have seamless and transparent access to investment performance information is an important component of this

Anshul Singhal, Managing director, Welspun One

Anshul Singhal, Managing director, Welspun One said, “As a fund manager, our fiduciary duty to our investors is paramount and ensuring that our investors have seamless and transparent access to investment performance information is an important component of this. This initiative is also an extension of the Welspun Groups ethos of customer centricity and strong emphasis on being a market leader in ESG practices across each of its businesses.”

The investor portal is a step to address one of the key challenges which investors face in the Indian private equity segment- the perception that these funds are “black boxes” where the investor does not have enough visibility on the performance of the investment through the life of the fund.

Similarly, We Founder Circle introduced a Startup Marketplace platform to make angel investing, networking & portfolio management easy for investors. The platform christened Invstt.com will make the entire process of discovery, evaluation, investment transaction & managing their portfolio easy through a dashboard-driven experience.

The platform is targeted at both individual angel investors and syndicates to invest in deals of their choice. Any syndicate, angel network, family office, institution, campus incubators, city/state incubators, or even corporates can also use the platform as a white-label SAAS product, to build & manage their startup & investor community. It will also help startups to directly raise funding on their own with ease on the platform.

Invstt.com is the first of its kind, bringing together tech, community, and investment solutions onto a single platform. It easily solves investor challenges like broken investing experience, little to no interaction with the community, and quality startups. The tech platform helps investors choose the portfolios/deals (deal discovery to portfolio management) that they want to invest in. It also helps them interact with founders and other investors apart from offering them a large funnel of highly-curated deal flow. Transparency is another core feature of the platform – investors are in the know of the actual validation of their portfolios.

For the startups registering on the platform, Invstt.com makes compliance hassle-free and provides smart connection, partnership, mentoring and collaboration, and smart funding/capital from strategic investors easy. It helps them stay one step ahead on visibility. Invstt.com has also introduced a Fund Raise Vehicle (FRV) which provides a way for startup founders to raise capital directly & efficiently allow investors into an investment round without making the company’s cap table more complicated.

“Invstt Trust abides by its tagline – Startup. Investment. Made Easy. We want to be a complete tech-enabled platform for angel investing. Over the years while building an angel investors’ community we have realized that the top pain problems of investors are the discovery of good startup investment opportunities, networking with other like-minded people, and managing the post-investment update & engagement with founders, with Invstt.com we have solved all these three problems. Even before the official launch there is huge interest we are getting from Indian & global ecosystem. Already more than 6000 investors & over 10 syndicates are using the platform. In 2023, this number will increase to 15000 investors & 100 syndicates.” said Neeraj Tyagi, CEO and Co-Founder of We Founder Circle.

Technology is going to be the biggest differentiator in early-stage investing, right from peer-to-peer networking, deal discovery, and portfolio management, everything is going to happen with the help of technology

Gaurav VK Singhvi, Co-Founder, We Founder Circle

“Technology is going to be the biggest differentiator in early-stage investing, right from peer-to-peer networking, deal discovery, and portfolio management, everything is going to happen with the help of technology. That is where Invstt comes in, said Gaurav VK Singhvi, Co-Founder, We Founder Circle.

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Invstt.com plans to build a stronger global community of angel investors by bringing together syndicates and other angel investor networks on this platform.

“The plan is to make the product global, already a huge community of Indian expats have started using the platform to discover good startups & they are happy with the ease of investing as the platform also offers the ease of cross-border investments. In 2023, we will be aggressively taking the product to the global market with a focus on Southeast Asia, the Middle East, US & UK” said Vikas Aggarwal, CoFounder of We Founder Circle.