Leading early-stage investment platform, Mumbai Angels, aims to double the amount of investments raised and start-ups funded in 2022 driven by growing interest among family offices and other high networth investors to fund start-ups. Last year, investments worth ₹80 crore were raised for about 50 start-ups through the platform.

Nandini Mansinghka, Co-Founder & CEO, Mumbai Angels, said, “In the past two years, we have seen a huge uptick in the number of investments, the total amount invested and even the amount of exits through our platform. Since the pandemic, we have seen a 40-50 per cent growth year-on-year. This calendar year we expect to raise ₹150-160 crore worth of funding for about 100 start-ups. So we could look as many as 8 deals inked per month.”

“In 2021, our portfolio saw exits and next funding rounds in companies including Exotel, Purplle, Blusmart, Instoried, Leegality, Original4sure, Vahdam India among others,” she added.

Talking about the deal flow, she said the platform sees as many as 800-1,000 investment proposals from start-ups in a month. “Leveraging on technology, our internal team then focuses on shortlisting it to just about 1-2 per cent of the proposals. This highly curated deal flow is then presented to our network of investors spread across over 60 global cities. We are involved in all aspects from finding a good deal to negotiating the terms and monitoring the portfolio till there is an exit,” Mansinghka added.

The platform focuses on seed-stage to Series A funding rounds for start-ups and the quantum of funding could range from about ₹50 lakh to about a million dollars (₹7.5 crore-10 crore). For larger quantum of deals, the platform also partners with other networks, individuals, family offices, corporates and funds to facilitate faster access to capital for founders.

Asset class

“Early stage investing has now emerged as a separate asset class in itself in the country and investors want to participate in funding a start-up as early as the first round. There is also a growing interest among family offices to invest in start-ups to diversify or complement their portfolios. In recent times, we have seen a huge interest from family offices, who want to deploy 5-10 per cent or more of their overall investment portfolio to fund start-ups through our platform,” Mansighka explained.

Mumbai Angels now has a portfolio of over 190 start-ups across sectors and cities in India. The platform has in recent times seen an uptick in funding deals in sectors such as electric vehicles, travel, space-tech, legal-tech and logistics. Mansinghka added that there is a huge deal flow also being seen in the consumer products space with the emergence of new-age direct-to-consumer brands.

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