New Delhi: The year has begun on a promising note for Agility Ventures. One of the leading angel investor networks in the country, the company has received approvals from the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) for an angel fund with a total corpus of the angel fund is INR 450 crore (USD 60 Million), Agility Ventures is looking to deploy the entire corpus in the next 3-4years.
The past two months have seen numerous angel investor networks applying to SEBI for AIFs (Alternative Investment Funds) to not just invest in the same ecosystem, but also get tax relief for angel investors while complying with the regulations. The Agility Ventures network, which is known to invest in startups or early-stage businesses in industries such as education, technology, healthcare, e-commerce, automobiles, electric vehicles, robotics, agri-tech and manufacturing among others, has seen record numbers of angel investors join the network last year. For 2022, they have set a target of increasing their network by 4000, which currently stands at 1500+ angel investors. With the AIFs, they are looking at deploying INR 75 crore this year in over 50 startups, which will also include fintech, cyber security and crypto.
Dhianu Das, Co-Founder, Agility Ventures, says, “SEBI’s approval to launch the fund is just the kind of start we were looking for in this New Year. After launching Fluid Ventures (a D2C focused SEBI-registered category-1 VC fund) last year, this is exactly the kind of fuel needed to roll-out our plans for 2022. After having invested in 5 companies through Fluid Ventures, we are not only ambitious about deploying INR 75 crore this year through Agility Ventures angel fund and investing it in over 50 startups but also very focused on achieving it. We are here to create more than just a ripple in the startup investment space and the angel fund will help us reach that goal.”
Seconding him, Prashant Narang, Co-Founder, Agility Ventures adds, “The interesting thing about raising the kind of angel fund that has been approved by SEBI is that it is sector-agnostic and does not limit itself to co-investments. This model also simplifies the financing process without changing the core style of the angel network. In fact, it adds to the pre-existing angel investor’s style of financing, which usually entails Bridge rounds to pre-series A rounds.”
Agility Ventures is a global network spread across 25 chapters in India, Canada, UAE, Australia and the UK as well. With a legal entity registered in America, they are also setting up a UAE-based team in February.
