Indian Angel Network: India's pioneering angel network

The Indian Angel Network (IAN), now operating as IAN Group, was founded in 2006 by Saurabh Srivastava, Padmaja Ruparel and Raman Roy — widely recognised as India's pioneering angel investing network. Over more than two decades it has grown into a multi-stage early-stage investment platform that claims ₹1,500 crore invested across 273+ companies in 28 sectors, and a Forbes India “India@75” timeline featured its 2006 founding as an iconic event of independent India.

Investment thesis

IAN's stated philosophy is “money, mentoring and market access”: invest in and back innovative companies solving real-world problems, driven by technology, targeting a large market, and led by entrepreneurs focused on execution and excellence. The platform describes its strategy as risk-mitigated and high-return, drawing on the group's mentor and expert pool plus global networks.

Sectors and stages

The platform covers one platform with multiple stages of early-stage investing: angel rounds through the network and its IAN Capital angel fund, the SEBI-registered Category I venture capital fund IAN Fund I, and the SEBI-registered Category II IAN Alpha Fund. Sectors span cleantech and environment, healthtech, agritech, edutech, fintech, industry 4.0, spacetech, web3 and robotics, among others.

Fund size and cheque sizes

IAN Fund I closed at ₹375 crore. The IAN Alpha Fund, a ₹1,000-crore ($100 million) vehicle led by co-founder Padmaja Ruparel, has closed and writes cheques of $1–5 million alongside co-investors. Across the whole platform, IAN has said it can write cheques from ₹25 lakh to ₹50 crore with co-investors, while the IAN Fund itself invested ₹50 lakh to ₹30 crore per company. At the individual angel level, co-founder Ruparel told Mint in 2025 that the average ticket is around ₹5–7 lakh per investor.

Notable portfolio

Portfolio highlights shown on the firm's own site include Druva, Wow! Momo, Spinny, WebEngage, Uniphore, FarEye, Dhruva Space, Zypp Electric, WoodenStreet, Truemeds, PlanetSpark and Phool. The network has said its portfolio of over 200 startups includes three unicorns and five soonicorns.

Partners and team

Saurabh Srivastava (chairman and co-founder), Padmaja Ruparel (co-founder and co-chair) and Raman Roy are the founding leadership. The fund's investment committee has historically included names such as Ajai Chowdhry, Alok Mittal and Harish Mehta.

Programs, accelerators and credits

No accelerator or structured start-up programme is publicly advertised, and no founder credits or perks programme is publicly documented. The platform's non-capital offer is its mentor and expert pool and its market-access introductions.