T-Hub, which leads India's pioneering innovation ecosystem, on Thursday announced the launch of its redesigned funding programme T-Angel to cater to the start-ups funding needs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. T-Angel will be supported by angel investors who will collectively invest up to Rs 50 lakh in each of the qualified start-ups.
T-Angel is a 45-days acceleration programme for which 15-20 tech start-ups with leading-edge solutions in the various sectors will be shortlisted. The programme for the second batch of chosen start-ups will commence in July 2021. Start-ups will be shortlisted from applications received after an extensive screening process by a committee of investors and mentors.
Applications will open Thursday (June 17) https://bit.ly/3vzdbuq and will close on June 30. The programme will focus on understanding and resolving two key constraints or pain points of a start-up's business operations that are hindering their chances of raising capital. Start-ups across India can apply to be a part of the programme.
"Even though there has been a substantial increase in start-ups' ability to raise funds, only a small percentage of them are successful in raising funding from angels. We realized that the success percentage can considerably increase if entrepreneurs are aware of what the angel investors are looking for. T-Angel's existence has been smartly tailored to solve this issue," said Ravi Narayan, CEO of T-Hub, said.
"T-Hub believes that there are plenty of technology start-ups that are investment-ready provided they learn the fundamentals from an investor perspective. With start-ups from the previous batch raising funds, the programme has bridged a good percentage of gap between the investors and the start-ups," he added.
During the programme, T-Hub will do an in-depth assessment of the start-up's business plan. Based on this, a customized work plan will be developed for each of the start-ups, with specific interventions. Post that, the shortlisted start-ups will undergo intensive training of five online sessions of two hours each from subject matter experts/consultants who will help in making them investment ready. However, the frequency of consultations will depend on various factors and will be jointly decided by the programme and participating start-ups. The outcome of this will be a refined business plan and investor pitch deck.
A five-member Investment Committee (IC) will evaluate onboarded start-ups and decide on the investments. Additionally, other investor members of this programme can also join the IC deliberations. Rs 50 lakh will be invested in three tranches.
The first batch of start-ups from the T-Angel programme received strong support in terms of refining their business model and investor pitches. This enabled selected start-ups with innovative solutions to raise funds, despite the ongoing pandemic, from key investors like TechStars, Lets Venture, and Phoenix Business Solutions. The programme not only helped them with the investor connects, but start-ups have also raised over Rs 10 crore funds since the end of the programme.
