Introduce Rs 125 crore fund called Ideaspring Capital
IFM Correspondent
April 27, 2016: In order to promote home-grown product startups, angel investors Naganand Doraswamy and Prashant Deshpande; T V Mohandas Pai, co-founder of venture capital firm Aarin Capital; Rajiv Mody, managing director of Sasken Technologies; and Amit and Arihant Patni, founders of Nirvana Venture Advisors came together to launch a Rs 125 crore fund called Ideaspring Capital.
The fund will focus on early stage product innovation startups and entrepreneurs in India. It will invest in technology start-ups with differentiated intellectual property in domains such as machine learning, health tech and internet of things, among others.
The fund will participate in seed deals where it will invest up to Rs 3 crore, as well as series A or pre-Series A deals where it will pump in another Rs 5 crore, said Doraswamy.
Ideaspring plans to handhold its portfolio companies in the first 18 months of their lifecycle and help them with customer feedback and product development.
“Fundamentally, we believe that the enterprise market is a larger cycle. We feel there are several areas which an entrepreneur may not give enough attention. They may not know how to market their product. We will partner with them and help these startups address areas which are crucial,” said Doraswamy.
The fund will invest in four to five startups in a year. India is known globally for its IT services companies, but of late, IT product companies have been making a mark. Facebook’s acquisition of Little Eye Lab and Yahoo’s acquisition of Bookpad shows that the country is capable of producing IT product companies as well.
“See, we know we have the talent. But startups do not know how to access the global market. We will help them get that platform,” said Doraswamy.