AngelPrime gets Mayfield backing; To invest $200-600K in 3 companies a year

Silicon Valley based venture capital fund Mayfield Fund and a group of unnamed investors have made an undisclosed investment in Bangalore-based angel investment firm and incubator AngelPrime. The investment will be used as seed capital for the companies that AngelPrime plans to incubate over the next three years and to fund the operations of the investment firm, a release said.

This is not the first time Mayfield is investing in a seed stage incubator or investor in India. Mayfield, along with several other funds and companies like Sierra Ventures, Google and Motorola, had invested in Mumbai-based Seedfund's first fund in 2006-07.

AngelPrime was founded last year by Bala Parthasarathy, Shripati Acharya and Sanjay Swamy. Parthasarathy and Acharya were the co-founders of Snapfish, a US based company in which Mayfield had invested, before it was bought out by Hewlett Packard. Swamy had worked in companies like Xerox PARC, was heading up mobile payment company mChek, and had also co-founded a mobile customer feedback service ZipDial.

AngelPrime will incubate companies, provide hands-­â€on mentoring, seed capital of approximately Rs 1-3 crore ($200K-$600K) and also offer a co-working leading-edge facility in Bangalore. The AngelPrime team has already incubated three companies in the past two years including ZipDial, mobile payments company Ezetap and kidswear e-retailer Unamia.

AngelPrime plans to incubate and groom three companies per year.

Mayfield Fund has over $3 billion under management, and had recently raised its 14th fund of $365 million. Mayfield also has a dedicated India fund of $111 million from which it makes largely non-tech venture and growth investments. Mayfield Managing Director Navin Chaddha was quoted as saying that the AngelPrime investment was done from the India fund.