Bangalore-based LetsVenture raises over $650K from Accel Partners, angels

Bangalore-based crowd funding platform LetsVenture has raised Rs 4 crore (over $650,000) from a syndicate of over 20 angel investors and institutional VCs led by Eka Software co-founder Manav Garg; InMobi co-founder Naveen Tewari; angel investor Rajan Anandan and Sharad Sharma, co-founder of software product industry think tank iSpirt, according to a report by The Economic Times, citing Manish Singhal, cofounder and CEO of LetsVenture. Those who invested in the company also include Accel Partners.

The platform will deploy the fund to broaden its deal-making services.

"Our vision behind this investment is to take the number of seed stage and Series A deals in India from 200 to over 1,000 in a couple of years," said Garg.

"Hardly 200-300 startups get funded each year whereas the potential is many folds higher. This money will help us scale up and build our outreach in more cities," said Singhal.

Set up with a seed capital of Rs 30 lakh in May 2013, LetsVenture.com brings investors and startups on a single domain—750 startups and 375 Indian investors have already registered with its platform. The venture was set up by Shanti Mohan, Singhal and Sanjay Jha. While Mohan and Singhal are serial entrepreneurs, Jha was VP-product engineering at Aptean.

Apart from helping startups raise investment, LetsVenture allows them to get their business plans reviewed by experts as well as connect to mentors. It has tied up with Bangalore-based K-Law as its legal partner which helps the startups and investors in drafting term sheets and shareholder agreements, while they are closing funding. The platform charges 2-3 per cent of the entire funding as a commission from entrepreneurs, once they receive the money. It also plans to charge investors about Rs 20,000 as an annual registration fee.

Earlier, fans merchandising venture Bluegape and Big Data startup Frrole had raised funds through LetsVenture. Garg was one of the investors in Frrole's angel round. He has also earlier invested in startups such as Stayzilla and enterprise software maker OrangeScape.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)