We Founder Circle (WFC), a founders-led early-stage start-up 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 has become one of the fastest-growing angel network communities and has already facilitated funds worth over 100 crores across 53 start-ups with 71 deals.
| Rank | Network | Investment Rounds |
| 1 | We Founder Circle | 71 |
| 2 | IPV | 53 |
| 3 | Mumbai Angels | 31 |
| 4 | Indian Angel Network | 29 |
| 5 | The Chennai Angels | 16 |
Established in August 2020, WFC is a global community of over 2000 founders and over 6700 strategic angels from over 40 countries that provides seed funding, strategic business partnerships, and global networking opportunities to entrepreneurs. Thus, ensuring a 360-degree support system of investment, business & community.
WFC has invested in 104 deals in more than 80 unique startups within 2 year of operations. It has also given 7 partial exits to its investors in the second year. 6700+ investors from over 400 cities and 40+ countries have participated in 100+ deals with over 20 Mn USD investments.
“We have been building a tech enabled global investment & networking platform for startup & investors ecosystem. This year we have not only topped the list of most active angel investment network, we have launched our startup marketplace to our community & now offering the same tech to other networks as SAAS product. In additional we have launched two funds a domestic fund & a crossborder fund.
On portfolio side, over 25% are being led by women entrepreneurs & 70% of our founders come from tier 2/3/4 cities, which validates our commitment to build a 100 startup cities of India vision. We are sector agnostic but have special focus on amazing business models disrupting various verticals in India including SAAS, EV, Agritech, Healthcare and Fintech.” Explains Neeraj Tyagi, Co-founder and CEO, We Founder Circle.
Born in the Pandemic, with its sector-agnostic approach, WFC has backed startups from over 10 sectors including- Deeptech, Web3, Fintech, Healthtech, Agritech, EV, D2C etc.
To embark another achievement in the second year of its operation
We Founder Circle Launches Two Angel Funds – a domestic fund for Indian investors and another crossborder fund setup in GIFT City, for overseas investors.
AIF registered with SEBI as an Angel Fund ‘Invstt Trust’ to empower early-stage startup investments in India. The target size of the Fund shall be an amount of up to INR 200 crores with a green shoe option of up to INR 200 crores, thereby totaling to INR 400 crores.
Angel Fund in GIFT City as ‘We Founder Circle Global Angels Fund’ is a cross-border fund targeting investors from across the globe. The fund size is $30M with a green shoe option of $30M and a term of 7 years with an option to extend by an additional 2 years.
“Our 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 be invest in at least 200 startups and catalyse their growth through our two angel funds.
At WFC we are extremely concious of creating a high level of compliance based investment process. We understand that with a large number of new angel investors joining the ecosystem, its crucial that the investment should be done following the regulatory compliances to protect the investors interest .” affirms, Gaurav VK Singhvi, Co-founder, We Founder Circle and Managing Partner, Invstt Trust.
Key Investment Done by We Founder Circle
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To ensure investment support at pre-seed stage, We Fouder Circle has successfully completed the second cohort of its global accelerator program EvolveX, where we are actively investing in young entrepreneurs .
On the success of it Ms. Bhawna Bhatnagar, Head of Global Partnerships & Co-founder, We Founder Circle affirmed
“We had begun with 2000 angels with us this year, and now we have reached a mark of 7000 angels hailing from 40 countries. With the backing of these strategic investors we are able to actively mentor & invest in idea stage companies. This year we have funded 13 companies from EvolveX but in 2023 we will be investing in 36 more.”
Before ending the year WFC has launched its much-awaited tech platform, for angels and startup community, to interact, co-create, and invest seamlessly. Invstt.com, tech-driven community platform will empower both startups & investors from across the globe to engage & democratize the ecosystem transactions.
Thus WFC is all set to unlock the true potential of tier 2/3/4 investors & founders and disrupt the Angel Investment in India with its approach to be Connected, Credible and Convenient for the startups and Investors.
Vikas Aggarwal, CoFounder, We Founder Circle said
“The plan is to make the product global, already a huge community of Indian expats have started using the platform to discover good startups & they are happy with the ease of investing as the platform also offers the ease of cross border investments. In 2023, we will be aggressively taking the product to the global market with a focus on Southeast Asia, the Middle East, US & UK”
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 tier2/3/4 cities of India and next year then plan is to reach to 70+ more. The idea is to enable the local city level ecosystem with tech, funding & community support. The SME business owners are adding immense strngth to our community with their years of experience of building businesses. Infact they are one of most active angel investor groups of WFC Community”
