Former Snapdeal chief product officer invests in LetsVenture

New Delhi: Anand Chandrasekaran, angel investor and former chief product officer of Snapdeal, has invested an undisclosed amount in fundraising platform LetsVenture, the company said on Thursday.

Registered in Singapore, with offices in India and the US, LetsVenture Online Pte is an online platform for fundraising and for start-ups and investors to connect.

Founded in 2013, the company had previously raised undisclosed amount in series A in 2015 from Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ltd; former Infosys board member Mohandas Pai; Accel Partners, People Group’s Anupam Mittal, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, Wipro’s Rishad Premji, and Freshdesk’s Girish Mathrubootham.

LetsVenture had raised Rs4 crore from a group of 21 angel investors in 2014.

“Going forward, the plan is to maintain our leader position in being the largest marketplace for start-up funding. With Anand’s investment, he also brings expertise on online marketplaces, having built one and invested in other marketplaces. He is also a very active angel investor, that he works with his portfolio companies, he is very supportive and helps the start-ups out in building products.” said Shanti Mohan, co-founder of LetsVenture, in a telephonic interview.

Chandrasekaran has made over 35 investments so far, in start-ups such as fashion discovery platform Wooplr, online lingerie brand Buttercups Intimate, cybersecurity company Lucideus Tech, among others.

“Also, given that Anand has moved to Valley (Facebook’s office in California), he is well known; we hope to leverage that connection to tap into investor community in the US.” Mohan added.

Currently a team of 32, Bengaluru-based LetsVenture, also opened its office in Delhi in February. The company claims to have facilitated 105 deals amounting to $40 million since its launch, which the company targets to increase to $100 million in next two years.

LetsVenture currently has over 2,200 investors from 23 countries registered on its platform.

Both start-ups and investors are screened through and evaluated before their profiles go live on the platform. The company claims to receive 200-250 investor requests per month, while it sees 25-30 start-ups create their profile daily.

Besides connecting start-ups to investors, LetsVenture also performs due diligence and paperwork during the fundraising process.

The company monetizes by way of charging 2% of the funds raised as fee to start-ups and an annual subscription member fee to the investors.

While the funding can range between Rs2 crore to Rs10 crore, the average is Rs3 crore, said Mohan.

LetsVenture competes with the likes of Applyifi, ah!Ventures and Tracxn Labs’ Tracxn Syndicate in India, in addition to US-based AngelList, which announced its India foray last year.

After quitting Snapdeal in May 2016, Chandrasekaran had announced that he would join Facebook in September.