For founders chasing early-stage capital in India, the JITO Angel Network is one of the most distinctive communities writing cheques. Run by the JITO Incubation & Innovation Foundation (JIIF), a Section 8 not-for-profit under the Jain International Trade Organisation, it has channelled the wealth of India's Jain business families into startups since 2017 - and applies a filter no other network uses.

Investment thesis

The network exists to build "an innovation driven entrepreneurial ecosystem for socio-economic development and building great companies". It is deliberately sector-agnostic: its portfolio spans AI/ML, fintech, healthtech, edtech, SaaS, mobility, media, EVs, agritech, defence-tech and D2C. The one hard rule is a Jain-principles screen - startups dealing with alcohol, non-vegetarian products, animal harm or violence are automatic dealbreakers, whatever their traction. The stage sweet spot is pre-seed to pre-Series A, mostly seed to Series A, with follow-on growth-stage cheques written in seven to eight companies so far.

Funds, stages and cheque sizes

The JITO Angel Network is a community of angels, not a SEBI-registered fund, so no formal corpus is publicly disclosed - but the scale figures reported over time tell the story. By May 2022 it had invested over Rs 106 crore in 56 companies, with a combined portfolio value of over Rs 300 crore, through roughly 400 angel investors (YourStory). In FY22 alone it deployed around Rs 47 crore across 28 startups, fresh and follow-on (The Hindu BusinessLine). A later roundup put cumulative totals above Rs 147 crore across 76 investments, 46 of them led (StartupNews.FYI, Oct 2023). Membership as an investor is open only to members of the Jain community.

Notable portfolio

The names read like a cross-section of Indian early-stage tech: NewsReach (a $300,000 seed round led by the network), KloudMate (pre-seed), BluSmart Mobility, Magenta Mobility, Chalo, Bodhi AI, Pickright Technologies, BHyve, Saarthi Pedagogy, Yangpoo, GalaxyCard, KopyKitab, SpoofSense, PlantVita, Nexus Power, Store My Goods and NavarsEdutech.

People

Pooja Mehta is Chief Investment Officer of the network; Sunil Kumar Singhvi serves as Vice Chairman; Rajat Mehta chairs the JITO Incubation and Innovation Foundation; and Siddharth Jain is credited as the network's founder.

Credits and perks

No public credits or perks package is disclosed. The value-add cited across press coverage is mentorship, investor-network access, and reach into a 45,000-member JITO community of business families, 1,000+ CXOs and CEOs and several Fortune 500 companies - unusual distribution firepower for a pre-seed cheque.

How to engage

Founders apply through the official JIIF platform at jitojiif.com via its startup signup, which includes an application-status dashboard. The network also runs JITO Shark Angels - live fundraising events, more than 20 of them across Indian cities and overseas since 2022 - and the JITO Incubation Centre, a cohort-based programme whose Cohort 10 launched in April 2024. One note: whatever your sector, make sure your business clears the Jain-principles screen before you apply.

Why it matters for founders

If you are raising pre-seed to pre-Series A and your business respects Jain principles, this is one of India's most active early-stage communities - cheque, mentorship and a 45,000-strong business network in one pitch. Just remember it is a community network, not a fund, so there is no fixed ticket size and decisions run through the angel collective.