McClure's Accelerator Plants Seed in India with 500 StartupWallah

Bangalore: India has seen a new wave of entrepreneurship in the last 12 months and it is getting mightier as the founder of 500 Startups, Dave McClure has formed a new $5 million VC fund in India called 500 StartupWallah (which literally means someone who does startups).

500 Startups which will invest in at least 10-12 Indian startups this year, had hired Pankaj Jain, a Delhi based mentor to focus on Indian startups. So far, they have invested in over 10 Indian companies including Teliport.me, MyGola and CucumberTown. In the fall 2012 batch, the accelerator took in 4 Indian startups including TradeBriefs, WalletKit, gazeMetrix and Instamojo.

Angel Investor Paul Singh who is a mentor at 500startups has been leading all of their India investments. The startup accelerator has also partnered with Rajesh Sawhney’s GSF India Accelerator.

McClure has been looking into a number of regions where technology is huge and in a position to have a large impact on struggling economies and he couldn’t do without India which is slated to become a $3.6 trillion economy by 2020 and has been attracting the attention of many high profile investors and mentors.