JOIN US India’s first online platform for angel investments in startups — venturefund.com, received huge response in the first two hours after it went live on Friday.
Founded by Ashok Mathai Kurien of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, Lord Alli of asos.com, serial investor Paul Shoker and others, the portal received 15 investors signing up and 150 startups uploading their business ideas in the first two hours.
The venture would be mentored by Google India Managing Director Rajan Anandan in his personal capacity. “We have an available investment of $93 million from 67 investors who had already committed,” Shoker told Deccan Herald. “With 15 more joining, I’m sure it will reach $200 million.”
Venturefund.com, Shoker said, is targeted to link the investing community to the ones who have good ideas and are in need of funding. This, he feels, will also shorten the entire process of an entrepreneur going through personally meeting every investor, which now would be done online.
The process on the website is also quite simple. One having an entrepreneurial idea needs to register and make a pitch for fund. A moderating team looks into the idea and publishes the same on the site if found suitable. “Our venture is not only to seek expressions of interest on investments from India but also from the entire world and Internet will facilitate that,” added Shoker. Just as to give an idea of how big this startup funding industry is, Shoker said, worldwide 100 million startups are founded every year; there are 2,65,000 angel investors around the world who in 2010 have invested $20.1 billion in startups.