iSeed eyeing harvest by cutting $150k cheques to 30 tech companies

BENGALURU: A new India-dedicated micro-venture capital fund, iSeed, has managed to bring in backers including AngelList's Naval Ravikant and the founders of Xiaomi, Thumbtack, Flutter, Bolt and WikiHow, as well as partners of investments firms like DST Global and Matrix Partners.

Micro VC funds typically invest before angel investors come in, usually cutting the first institutional cheques in early stage startups.

Anchored by Ravikant, a prominent angel investor in Silicon Valley, and run by Utsav Somani, India Partner for AngelList, iSeed plans to invest in 30 early-stage technology startups at an average check of $150,000. The fund size is nearly $5 million, according to people in the know.


“As VCs raise bigger and bigger funds, they start to invest later-stage instead of taking true early-stage risk on teams. Utsav is backing great founders in India and investing at the earliest stages,” Ravikant told ET.

iSeed will be listed on AngelList, which lets startups raise capital from accredited investors along with helping job-seekers looking to work at startups.

Together, backers of iSeed have started or invested in 24 unicorns worth over $200 billion combined, as per a note by the fund. "I was really inspired by my colleagues Ryan Hoover and Niv Dror, who went on to raise Weekend Fund and Shrug Capital, respectively. Their funds have substantiated that sole partner investment vehicles behind proven operators bring great access and judgement. This trend of micro-VCs should hit Indian shores very soon and we have the infrastructure ready for this at AngelList India,” Somani told ET.

iSeed will be supported by the AngelList back office, which makes it easy for full-time founders to run venture funds on the side, Somani said.