How does Angel Network membership benefit its members?

How does Mumbai Angels Network membership benefit its members?

The members of Mumbai Angels Network are provided with enhanced deal flow, better quality due diligence and the negotiating power of indirectly pooling capital. The group also provides a forum of fellowship of like-minded successful people. Investing in very early stage companies is inherently risky. The Mumbai Angels Network brings together successful and experienced people who by sharing their experience and vision with the other members analyze and determine potential start up companies for investment.

Develop an initial investing strategy – Early on, it is important to think through why you want to invest as an angel, what kinds of deals make your day, and how many investments you should make over time.  Seasoned Angel Investors recommends that those new to angel investing think about the kinds of companies—industry, stage, and location—they like to deal with and how much of their capital they are willing and able to put at risk.

Actively participate in Q&As –Your first chance to dive into the investment experience will likely be during the Q&A session, after entrepreneurs pitch their investments in angel group and pitch meetings. Your best way to learn and to assess the investment potential is to ask questions

When ready, write that first check – At some point, you will find a balance of feeling like you’ve learned the basics about the process and what you need to know to invest in a good deal. At this time, take the big leap of making your first investment. 

How much money do the members of the Mumbai Angels Network typically invest in companies?

A typical average ticket size is INR 3 crores/ USD 500,000 with each investing member contributing to average INR 30lacs/USD 50,000.

If the investment size is larger, the Mumbai Angels Networking may syndicate the investment with other investor groups.

Steps to become an Angel Investor

Why is Startup investing exciting?

It's exciting to think about all the behind the scenes work going on at a start up's end and to know you had a hand in making it happen.

It's also exciting imagining the potential sky high return on investment you could make.

Educate yourself - Angel Investing Masterclass

As angel investing has become more well-known and popular, highly experienced angels with good returns have produced a growing wealth of material to help others develop and grow their angel investing skills. Mumbai Angels Network conducts workshops and events, where you can meet seasoned angel investors, industry experts & entrepreneurs, watch StartUp pitches and get a sense of how to assess & invest in a startup.

Ask experienced Angels for advice

Asking questions provides a jump start in developing relationships and building your angel network for investing together in the future.  So it makes sense to start your journey by asking questions about being an angel.

Join an Angel Group

Join an angel group or Angel network whose members have expertise and successful track record. Trying to be a lone angel tends to further increase the risk of angel investing. The addition of multiple opinions and insights from others with varied and relevant experience can lead to higher probabilities of success

 To more about Angel Network Click Here or Join us as Angel Investor

The Parfait Co. raises seed investment from Mumbai Angels Network

The Parfait Co. raises seed investment from Mumbai Angels Network The Parfait Co. (TPC) was launched in Mumbai on Oct 2014, with a menu of twelve flavours of French style parfait. Being the only brand in India and across the world to manufacture packaged French parfait they have created a unique position for themselves on supermarket freezer shelves and in the hearts of their loyalists. French Parfait is ice cream’s fussy French cousin and TPC’s endeavor was to deliver all natural, preservative, stabilizer, emulsifier and gluten free parfait to India’s increasingly growing health conscious consumer. Two years into the business, TPC  raised its first round of Seed investment from Mumbai Angels Network. With expansion plans to grow its brand presence in Modern Trade and General Trade stores across Mumbai and eventually pan India, TPC aims at being the go – to dessert choice for the upwardly mobile Indian consumer with a brand which is homegrown, sustainable and on par with international ice cream brands in terms of quality and price points. Funds will be used for team building and expansion of operations and sales support along with product innovation and the launch of a smaller size SKU in order to increase our footprint across the growing Indian Modern trade and General trade retail segment. Vikas Khemani, Deal Lead, Mumbai Angels Network Sharmeen has created a fabulous product which is not only differentiated but also of international standard and quality. I am sure this will find huge space in the Indian dessert menu. We are excited about the product, management team and company growth. Sharmeen Indorewala, Founder, The Parfait Co. The Mumbai Angels Network (MA) team has been a key part of our journey when it came to aligning with the right investors and designing the pitch to get the investment required for growth at this stage. We were not only looking for funding but also investors with a keen insight into our industry who would act as mentors, and MA has achieved just that for us by bringing Vikas Khemani, our Deal lead on board. About Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors: Mumbai Angels Network (www.mumbaiangels.com) is one of India’s largest angel networks with 250+ members across four active chapters - Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bangalore. Their portfolio comprises of 85+ ventures across multiple sectors focused primarily on seed and early stage companies.

Mumbai Angels Network contributes INR 3.5 Crore to a INR 4 Crore raise by Vahdam Teas.

India based Vahdam Teas raises $650,000 to create India’s first global tea brand Mumbai Angels Network contributes INR 3.5 Crore to a INR 4 Crore raise by Vahdam Teas. Other investors in the round include Kanwaljit Singh from Fireside Ventures and Singapore Angels The company which is 100% online, as of today, has already shipped garden fresh Darjeeling and other teas to more than 76 countries and will use the funds to focus on marketing, product development and to open a warehouse in it's top market, USA. Vahdam teas do not travel in containers for months before being packaged and sold. All the teas are procured direct from plantations and tea growers within 24-72 hours of production, packaged garden fresh and shipped directly from source in India. By eliminating all middlemen Vahdam Teas are not only able to make available fresh high quality teas but are also able to retain all earnings in the region where these divine teas are grown and nurtured by millions of growers with immense love, care and passion. This is a process which ultimately helps every farmer get a better price for their produce. Vahdam Teas allows tea lovers across the world to sit back and relish the satisfaction of patronising a truly ethical, fair-trade tea.  Bala Sarda, 25, Founder, Vahdam Teas, says, “It is when I joined my family bulk export business, I realized that most of the teas being sold were reaching the consumers across the world, an average of 12 months after harvest. More importantly, even though we grow the finest teas here in India, the absence of a home-grown brand led to a massive dependence of the entire industry on foreign brands, who quickly move to teas from other regions as soon as local farmers increase their price. It was then that I decided to take the plunge with Vahdam Teas with a clear vision of not only to re-introduce consumers across the world to real tea i.e fresh tea, but also initiate a journey to empower an entire tea industry in the long run. We really believe that a global tea brand can be the biggest success story of our Prime Minister’s ambitious ‘Make in India’ program. And we are humbled to be backed by some of the most eminent angel investors in our space, who share our vision.”  Mr. Balvinder Kalsi, Deal Lead Mumbai Angels & Ex-President DUPONT, South Asia & ASEAN says,"India is the second largest producer of tea globally. Yet​, we ​do not have a truly Indian tea brand selling quality teas in the global markets​. ​We are very excited about what Vahdam​ ​has been able to accomplish till now and the large market opportunity in the key overseas markets. Bala with his ​industry experience has a great opportunity in this space" Mr. Jatin Aneja, Deal Lead Mumbai Angels & Senior Partner at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas says,  "Tea business is a good category to be in, with India being the second largest producer and supplier in the world. There is space for Indian tea brands to make a name globally. The Indian economy’s growing perception abroad coupled with a good product makes it an attractive investment proposition. The promoter has a family heritage in the tea business and has a strong understanding of the industry. The tea industry is seeing strong growth and I believe Vahdam Teas is well positioned to be a major player in the global arena" About Vahdam Teas Vahdam Teas (www.vahdamteas.com) is established by a 4th generation tea entrepreneur, Bala Sarda, with a lineage of over 80 years in the Indian tea industry. He comes with 3 years of experience in this industry before starting Vahdam Teas. About Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors: Mumbai Angels Network (www.mumbaiangels.com) is one of India’s largest angel networks with 250+ members across three active chapters - Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Their portfolio comprises of 80+ ventures across multiple sectors focused primarily on seed and early stage companies.

WittyParrot raises a seed series from Mumbai Angels Network and Silicon Valley based angel investors

WittyParrot raises a seed series from Mumbai Angels Network and Silicon Valley based angel investors Mumbai, December 2016: WittyParrot, a cloud based SaaS platform company focused on delivering Intelligent Content for Marketing, Sales and Support solutions, is announcing its Rs. 3+ Crore series seed financing led by Mumbai Angels Network with participation from silicon valley based angel investors. The company headquartered in San Jose, California with sales offices across USA and development center in Bangalore India, is focused on the automation of enterprise content leveraging cutting-edge big data and data science technologies. Selected list of customers include companies such as Oracle, Citrix, Couchbase, etc. According to research, the top issues plaguing companies are related to time wasted in finding right content, duplicative effort in creating or curating content and inconsistent information being delivered to customers. Sheer volume of silo’ed data and the pace at which it is produced in the enterprise is posing major challenge for sales and support to find relevant content at the point of use leading to delay and inconsistent response. WittyParrot’s intelligent content delivery platform combined with collaboration and communication capabilities deliver contextually relevant content in the form of modular content blocks along with rich metadata that can be instantly found and consumed by sales and support. Anil Jwalanna, Founder & CEO, added, "WittyParrotis built on a profound, but simple idea. To make it easy to find relevant information in bite-size and then to use it, so that anyone can communicate faster, more effectively, and more consistently. We will be utilizing funds to expand our sales team and grow footprint in the US as well as India. Saahil Bhatia, Deal Lead, Mumbai Angels Network, added, “We were highly impressed with the management team at WittyParrot and the quality of the platform they have built. A study by IDC reports that an average “knowledge worker” spends over 28 hours per month trying to find and repurpose information. WP makes this process extremely simple and fast. The company ran a case study at VM Ware and found a 2.5x increase in the recruiter’s ability to outreach, promote and share on social media. Such productivity improvement is a great customer retention tool. The company is focusing on increasing customer retention through their intelligent algorithm that is able to provide more contextual results to user searches and also provide recommendations on content that has worked successfully in the past." About WittyParrot WittyParrot (www.wittyparrot.com) is a Cloud-based intelligent content delivery platform for marketing, sales and support that help companies to speak with one voice. We are deeply interested in solving the problems common to both small and large companies in communicating consistently and responsively. With WittyParrot marketing, sales and support professionals can find the right information, assemble it in the right order, share and track it with ease. About Mumbai Angels Venture Mentors: Mumbai Angels Network (www.mumbaiangels.com) is one of India’s largest angel networks with 250+ members across three active chapters - Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Their portfolio comprises of 80+ ventures across multiple sectors focused primarily on seed and early stage companies.

Mumbai Angels Network at the Urban Venture Challenge

The Urban Venture Challenge was organised by the IIMB-Real Estate Research Initiative and was supported by Stanford’s The Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law and Asia Initiatives. The challenge aim was to identify entrepreneurs who are working on ideas and ventures that will transform India’s cities. Thematic areas of focus included urban infrastructure, liveability and inclusive cities.

The actual pitches by companies was preceded by a startup bootcamp workshop for the entrepreneurs. There was also a keynote speech by Professor Jagan Shah, Director, National Institute of Urban Affairs, and a panel discussion, hosted by urban expert V. Ravichandar, on which Mumbai Angels’ representative Abhishek Bhatewara (of Rohan Builders – a real estate and construction group headquartered in Pune) was also a panellist. The panel discussed the opportunities and challenges to make urban transformation a reality. Post the panel discussion, 12 organizations working in the social impact space made a pitch to the jury comprising of industry, investors, government, and academia. 

The winners included a start-up that channelises youth to locate problems in urban spaces and then work together to solve them. Another one had created innovative air quality monitoring solution helping actionable intelligence. 

Abhishek Bhatewara says, “Urbanization is happening at a rapid rate, not just in India, but most developing economies around the world. This no doubt unavoidable, but it comes with its set of challenges such as accessibility, pollution, safety. Solution to these problems although traditionally falls under the perview of the government, we cannot expect the government to solve them all. And this is where there is a need and opportunity of the social ventures. And some of these ventures, with the right business and revenue models, are definitely capable of giving superior returns on the investment.”

Mumbai Angels Network PUNE Startup ecosystem building workshop

Mumbai Angels Network is  a decade long story of transformation of StartUp ecosystem.

So, is Pune - this city is a story of transformation in the past ten years. And the biggest transformation is in the StartUp scene.

Like elsewhere in India, today the aspirations are shifting towards founding and working at startups focused on solving unique Indian problems, as well as addressing a global market. India is rapidly making the shift from being the world’s software developer to becoming a creator of software solutions and products in its own right. 

                                     

While Pune’s startup scene has been overshadowed by that of Bangalore and Delhi, it has quietly had organic growth. According to TiE Pune, there are now over 400 startups in Pune and according to iSPIRT, 21% of India’s product startups are from Pune.*

While still nascent, the startup ecosystem is gaining momentum on its own. There are grassroots organizations feeding the startup scene and local angel investors are active. High growth start-ups such as Druva, Pubmatic, and Airtight Networks are providing an anchor to the industry.

                                    

Mumbai Angels Network's Pune workshop sought to explore how to nurture and groom startups. The stumbling blocks to achieving success include a lack of early stage funding and startup mentorship.

*inputs from Mike Manson,Partner,Wesley Clover International