Padmaja Ruparel's IAN Group invests Rs. 85 crores in 52 companies in 2022

By: WE Staff | Monday, 2 January 2023

IAN, India’s single largest platform for seed and early-age investing, ends 2022 with investment in 52 companies with over Rs. 85 crores of investment in Fintech, B2B SaaS, D2C, Cleantech amongst others. These are all companies solving real problems and therefore are either consumer facing and / or creating impact. Taking ahead its vision of boosting the startup ecosystem and supporting entrepreneurs to build high-growth, valuable companies, IAN invested in 11 women-owned ventures and 13 startups from Tier 2 and 3 cities.

2022 also brought lucrative exits from 13 high value companies. Against an investment of Rs. 28 crores in these 13 companies, IAN gave cash exits of almost 4x and investors continued to hold shares worth Rs. 180 crores. Further, IAN’s portfolio companies have raised a total funding of INR 1260 crore this year. As of September 2022, the IAN Group had invested in more than 17% of companies led by women entrepreneurs and over 25% of companies from tier cities with an investing fund corpus of ~20% and 21% respectively.

The IAN platform, has till date, has helped create over 90,000 jobs, enabled filing of 160+ patents, and helped the reduction of over 40,000 MT of carbon emissions.

Speaking on IAN’s performance this year, PadmajaRuparel, Co-Founder, IAN, said, “Startups and startup investing have established themselves in the HNI portfolio. Despite the geo political scenario, mass layoffs etc., IAN has proved to be, once again, a high traction platform enabling investments, exiting, and helping companies with their next rounds. We are now confident that the coming year will be all the more promising. With the growth curve IAN has had, it will soon achieve its vision of supporting 500 startups, investing INR 5000 crores and creating 500,000 jobs by 2030.”

IAN is recognized for pioneering the concept of angel investment in India. The platform was established in 2006, focusing on nurturing and mentoring next-generation entrepreneurs. Since then, IAN Group has invested INR 900 crore in more than 200 companies that have further raised INR 18,000 crore in funding. Currently, IAN has a market valuation of over $9 billion, with three unicorns and five soonicorns in its portfolio.

IAN’s maiden VC fund, IAN Fund 1, includes companies such as Phool.co, Dhruva Space, WebEngage, Wow! Momo, Propelld, etc., in its portfolio. Close to 70% of the fund’s portfolio companies have seen the next rounds from marquee Indian and global investors. Following the success of IAN Fund 1, IAN launched IAN Alpha Fund, a SEBI registered Cat II VC fund with a fund corpus of INR 1000 crores this year. This fund is keen to invest in Cleantech, Healthtech, Agritech, Edutech, Fintech and emerging sectors like Industry 4.0, Web 3, Robotics, etc. The year also saw the operationalisation of BioAngels, India’s first sector focused angel investor group, in partnership with BIRAC.

Both IAN Alpha Fund and BioAngels, demonstrate IAN’s continued excitement for Indian startups and the growth of innovation in the healthcare, biotech, agri and cleantech sectors, apart from deeptech, D2C / consumer-facing companies.