Angel Investors Network springs from IIT Bombay

New Delhi:  Lead Angels (LA) is a newly found angel investors network founded by three members from IIT Bombay (IIT-B) – Professor C Amarnath, who has just retired from the IIT-B faculty position where he was teaching Mechanical Engineering; Sushanto Mitra who is an ex-CEO of Society for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and now is the CEO of LA; and a recent graduate Bipin Kumar, who gave up several job offers with attractive packages to join LA.
Besides the founders, the LA team members also include successful entrepreneurs, angel investors who have invested in several promising startups, academics who have nurtured innovation and entrepreneurship in their students and consultants who offer advice to companies on the rise.

The member list includes the likes of E N Venkat, Partner of Aavishkar Frontier Fund; Atul Pradhan, Founder of Transfoalign Consulting; L Subramayan, Founder of Trivone Digital; and Faisal Farooqui, Founder of Mouthshut.com. The team is also investing its own funds with the network to align their interests with other members and investee companies.

Recently, Lead Angels held its first meeting in Mumbai, where many companies presented their business plans. Some that seemed promising to LA were selected for investment and mentoring.

According to Professor Amarnath, innovation in India is not able to take off only because investments and academic research have not been able to come together as they should. LA will also offer full support to the businesses it invests in.
This post was written by Aditya Singhal, managing director of askIITians.