Early-stage VC funds Kae Capital & YourNest Angel Fund join startup accelerator VentureNursery

VentureNursery, an angel-backed startup accelerator launched in March this year, has announced that two of India's early-stage venture funds – Mumbai-based Kae Capital and Delhi-based YourNest Angel Fund have joined its Charter Angels programme.

The programme provides a platform for graduating startups, so that they can pitch for mentoring and seed funding by seasoned and active angel investors.

"There is a gaping need for an accelerator in the Indian market and the launch of VentureNursery fills that gap perfectly," said Sasha Mirchandani, Partner at Kae Capital.

"As a Charter Angel member, YourNest Angel Fund is keen to nurture promising entrepreneurs identified through the boot camp," added Sunil Goyal, CEO and fund manager. YourNest Angel Fund made its first close earlier this year by raising the initial corpus from a set of 40 individual investors, including angel investors and first-generation entrepreneurs. In March, the VC firm announced its first investment into a video analytics startup called Proof Of Performance.

Commenting on the development, Shravan Shroff, co-founder of VentureNursery, said, "We welcome Kae Capital and YourNest to our Charter Angels programme. Both Sasha (Mirchandani) and Sunil (Goyal) have been early believers in our initiative and we are happy that the funds managed by them have formally agreed to support VentureNursery."

Set up by angel investors Shravan Shroff (founder and former MD of Fame Cinemas) and Ravi Kiran (former CEO, South East & South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group, and co-founder & managing partner at Friends of Ambition), the accelerator is focusing on startups in six sectors – media & entertainment, retail, e-commerce, consumer technology, education and cleantech. Bulk of the applications came for retail, consumer technology and e-business sectors, according to a statement. The two programmes run by the accelerator include a 90-day boot camp and the ParallelTrack programme. While the former focuses on fresh startups, the latter is meant for startups at a more advanced stage and who may not need to go through the entire 90-day boot camp. Earlier this month, VentureNursery announced that it had received more than 100 applications for both its accelerator programmes.