Bangalore: Mumbai Angels, one of India’s leading and first angel investment clubs which focuses on early stage startups is launching a maiden sidecar fund of about $20 million (INR 1billion) in November which will be invested in 25 to 30 early stage companies over the next three years, reports business standard.

These funds would be raised from Mumbai Angel members, institutional investors and high net worth individuals and this would be a fund which would be first of its kind in India. These types of funds would allow angel investors to be a part of the follow on investments in portfolio companies or even during its series A funding. Mumbai Angels was founded by Prashant Choksey and Sasha Mirchandani in 2006 and it has eventually grown by investing in more than 50 companies from various backgrounds.

“Many a time, new members miss out investing in a promising start-up. With sidecar funds, they would now be able to invest in a company that’s in the process of raising the next round of funds. Also, a sidecar fund would allow Mumbai Angels to continue to have a larger say in the investee firm," says Choksey.

The idea of Mumbai Angels struck the minds of the Choksey and Mirchandani when they found themselves spending more time with entrepreneurs in coffee shops missing crucial business meetings of their respective family businesses. “We tried to find out if there was any set-up in India doing anything similar but we didn’t get anything. Saurabh (Srivastava, who started India Angel Networks), too, was starting at the same time. But we wanted to focus on Mumbai,” said Choksey.

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