New Delhi, Jan 05, 2023, IANS
New Delhi, Jan 5 (IANS) We Founder Circle (WFC), a founders' led early-stage startup investment platform, have closed their second year with 71 startup investments in 53 unique start-ups to emerge as the largest Angel Network in India of the year 2022.
The platform became one of the fastest-growing angel network communities and has already facilitated funds worth over Rs 100 crore across 53 startups with 71 deals, it said in a statement.
"We have been building a tech-enabled global investment & networking platform for the startup and investors ecosystem. This year, we have not only topped the list of most active angel investment networks, but we have also launched our startup marketplace to our community and now offer the same tech to other networks as SAAS products. In addition, we have launched two funds, a domestic fund and a cross-border fund," said Neeraj Tyagi, Co-founder and CEO, We Founder Circle.
Established in August 2020, WFC is a global community of over 2,000 founders and over 6,700 strategic angels from over 40 countries that provides seed funding, strategic business partnerships and global networking opportunities to entrepreneurs.
WFC has invested in 104 deals in more than 80 unique startups within 2 year of operations.
It has also given seven partial exits to its investors in the second year. More than 6,700 investors from over 400 cities and over 40 countries have participated in 100 deals with over $20 million in investments.
"On the portfolio side, over 25 per cent are being led by women entrepreneurs and 70 per cent of our founders come from Tier 2/3/4 cities, which validates our commitment to building a 100 startup cities of India vision," said Tyagi.
"We are sector agnostic but have a special focus on amazing business models disrupting various verticals in India including SAAS, EV, Agritech, Healthcare and Fintech," he added.
Born in the pandemic, with its sector-agnostic approach, WFC has backed startups from over 10 sectors including Deeptech, Web3, Fintech, Healthtech, Agritech, EV and D2C, etc.
Gaurav VK Singhvi, Co-founder, We Founder Circle and Managing Partner, Invstt Trust, said that their ambition is to create a multi-stage investment framework to encourage innovations and ideas from a pre-seed stage to a growth stage.
"This year, we could invest in 53 startups but in the coming year, we will invest in at least 200 startups and catalyse their growth through our two angel funds. This is not all and we will keep introducing more regulatory compliance investment instruments in 2023 also," said Singhvi.
"We understand that with a large number of new angel investors joining the ecosystem,Ait'sAcrucial that the investment should be done following the regulatory compliances to protect the investor's interest," Singhvi added.
To ensure investment support at the pre-seed stage, We Founder Circle has successfully completed the second cohort of its global accelerator programme called 'EvolveX'.
"We began with 2,000 angels this year and now, we have reached a mark of 7,000 angels hailing from 40 countries. With the backing of these strategic investors, we are able to actively mentor and invest in idea-stage companies. This year, we have funded 13 companies from EvolveX but in 2023 we will be investing in 36 more,a said Bhawna Bhatnagar, Head of Global Partnerships and Co-founder, We Founder Circle.
WFC has also launched its much-awaited tech platform for angels and the startup community. Called Invstt.com, the tech-driven community platform will empower both startups and investors.
"In 2023, we will be aggressively taking the product to the global market with a focus on southeast Asia, the Middle East, the US and the UK," said Vikas Aggarwal, CoFounder, We Founder Circle.
Targeting a big network expansion in 2023, WFC has plans to expand to 100 cities of India to bring the SME business community into the mainstream ecosystem.
Deo Saurabh, CoFounder, We Founder Circle, said: "In 2022 we have covered 35 Tier 2/3/4 cities of India and next year the planAis to reach to 70+ more. The idea is to enable the local city-level ecosystemAwith tech, funding & community support. The SME business owners areAadding immense strength to our community with their years of experience inAbuilding businesses. In fact, they are one of the most active angel investor groups of WFC Community."