December 08, 2022, New Delhi: We Founder Circle (WFC), an early-stage startup investment platform, which includes a global community of successful founders and strategic angels has launched Invstt Trust (“Fund”), an AIF registered with SEBI as an Angel Fund, to empower early-stage startup investments in India. The target size of the Fund shall be an amount of up to ₹200 crores with a green shoe option of up to ₹200 crores, thereby totaling to ₹400 crores.
WFC has also launched the We Founder Circle Global Angels Fund in GIFT City. We Founder Circle Global Angels Fund is a cross-border fund targeting investors from across the globe. The fund size is $30M with a green shoe option of $30M and a term of 7 years with an option to extend by an additional 2 years. We Founder Circle Global Angels Fund is also a sector-agnostic fund that will enable world investors to participate in opportunities all over the globe.
While the Fund is sector-agnostic, it will predominantly look to invest in Portfolio Entities across various sectors such as Financial Services, Deep Tech, Financial Technology, EV, Content Gaming, Industrial Tech, Retail Tech, Ed Tech, Supply Chain, AgriTech, Consumer/D2C, Manufacturing, and others (Logistics, Healthcare, Technology, Agri-Allied sectors, etc.)
“2021 saw 42 startups turning into unicorns and furnishing handsome results for their early-stage investors. This has lured many HNIs to turn to angel investments; however, the trend is still pretty nascent and requires streamlining alongside the right guidance for founders and investors. Therefore, we have envisaged this fund to catalyze the process from both sides – angel investors and early-stage startups. Two to three years back, it was about mentoring and incubating startups. Now the requirement has arisen wherein it is also about strengthening the flow of capital, streamlining it for HNIs to encourage the plus results, and bridging the gap between angel investors and startups. Besides capital access, fund also provides networking and mentorship support to startups with tech expertise and global business connections.” said Mr. Gaurav VK Singhvi, Managing Partner of Investment Manager (We Founder Circle Angel Accelerator LLP) of both the Fund.
Though it might be fluctuating for late-stage inflows, for early-stage startups the average deal size has not been impacted much, which highlights the rising interest of potential angel investors in startup investments as asset-class financial instruments. In line with the same, Funds will be investing in startups raising Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A rounds.
“This Funds are a natural extension of our endeavor to include more startups & investors into the mainstream of the ecosystem. We have been building both sides of the community & this fund will enable the growing number of angel investors to invest in a regulatory & compliance-based framework. We expect to bring in more than 1000 angel investors to invest in 200 startups in the next 24 months,” said Neeraj Tyagi, Co-Founder & CEO, We Founder Circle.
In the past 23 months, We Founder Circle has invested in 70+ startups at their early stage and mentored them through various initiatives. Funds will help founders set for the next round of growth. The launch of Funds is in line with WFC’s ambition to empower 500 startups in 5 years.
