This Indian startup expands presence in UK, aims 500 investors and Rs 250 crore seed funding by 2020

UK has been the epicentre of start-up ventures in Europe. It has an abundance of accelerators, government support and serves as an access point to other markets of the West. Venture Catalysts (VCats), India’s first integrated incubator, announced its plans to spread out its robustly expanding network in a market with a high concentration of capital, international talent and innovative business ideas.

VCats, after making its limelight presence as an investment platform in India and amongst the top 5 in Asia, has now joined hands with JPIN, a Euro-Asia focused venture capital (VC), a start-up mentor and a global advisory, to build the largest Euro-Asia corridor for angels to invest and nurture early stage ventures.

The third largest tech hub in the world, London provides the ideal ecosystem to build the largest community of angels focused on enabling both Asian start-ups to expand to Europe and vice versa. Venture Catalysts have developed detailed blueprints for the year 2019 and 2020, jotting down their objectives to be achieved sequentially.

In 2019, VCats aims to develop a 150+ member strong investment network that includes HNI/Corporate as well as business families in the UK. It also wishes to raise INR 60-75 crore for early stage deals and continue to increase the amount to INR 100 crore+ for subsequent rounds.

Venture Catalysts, for the year 2020, targets to aggressively expand its investor community network to include more than 500 members. It will also help raise the early stage and follow-up round funding capabilities significantly, with a range of INR 125-150 crore+ for early-stage deals and INR 250 crore+ allocate for subsequent rounds.

Making a statement on the current association, Anuj Golecha, Co-Founder, Venture Catalysts said, “The current expansion to London is aimed at presenting a more comprehensive global presence while catering to the great business environment and opportunities present there. Apart from gaining access to the spirited start-up community in London, a big positive for us has been seeing the warm response from the expatriate and Euro-Asian business community here. JPIN-Venture Catalysts is looking forward to functioning as an efficient bridge between stakeholders in both regions to develop a cohesive and thriving start-up ecosystem that promises a steady exchange of ideas, opportunities and resources.”

Nayan Gala, Managing Partner, JPIN Venture Catalysts, UK said, “We see the Euro-Asia corridor to be indispensable in providing start-ups and scale-ups collaboration and growth capital across the borders. There has been a significant increase in trade between India and UK in the last few years, currently estimated at £ 20Bn. We are very excited to partner with VCats to provide a credible platform to the Euro-Asia investor community, with vetted start-ups.”

JPIN through its vast network of investors from diverse backgrounds, including angel investors, HNIs, family offices, VCs, corporate and private equity firms, plans to create the first of its kind professional network for angel investing in the Euro-Asia corridor at a grand scale, something that had been missing and is a critical gap between two of the biggest start-up economies.