The Ledger
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Swaroop: Accel Atoms reviewed 900 AI applications, finding only one viable investment
“In for example, Axel Atoms, when we opened the first time AI cohort we got some 900 applications from AI, and I think 500 of them were marketing AI companies, which had already happened in the US in terms of actual original, very different ideas. Maybe there w…”
Swaroop: $500K-funded startups sometimes scale faster than $5M-funded peers
“And at least what I have observed is a company which you give, let's say a half a million versus a company which you give a five million. Sometimes the half a million company scales much faster, better than the five million company, because the half a million …”
Swaroop: Accel early-stage deals require no voting, allowing single-partner conviction
“So we don't have voting. If one person thinks that we should invest in this team, we do. So even now I think for up to a certain amount of check sizes only one person can just invest if obviously at a risk management, if more larger check size, you know, like …”
Swaroop: Accel's $650M fund targets 80-90% first-investor deals
“So if you look, we have a six hundred and fifty million fund, which we raise in January, we will probably do. Like majority of the companies will be the first investors, 80, 90% of the companies. And we do seed from let's say a hundred K all the way. We also w…”
Swaroop: Accel wrote a $200M first check into Eruditus at late stage
“We invested two hundred million dollars as the first check in from our side into the company in the late stage growth round.”
Swaroop: Accel has backed Jungle Ventures, Ideaspring, and Pi Ventures as an LP
“Axel has been LP in jungle ventures in ideas from capital and in pie ventures.”
Swaroop: Accel backed around 35 GenAI startups in India within two years
“So in the last two years we have invested in close to 35 watt generative AI companies in India. I think globally the number is even larger.”
Swaroop: Accel has no sector swimlanes, letting investors back any category
“We don't have swim lens. Like, so most funds tend to have specialists and that creates boundaries, right? So People will say, okay, you are a SaaS team and they only look at SaaS in Axel. Any investor can do anything like tomorrow. If I want to wake up and say…”
Swaroop: Truemeds can become a $10B+ company
“So too much is growing amazingly fast. So I think they can be a very large company. They can be a ten billion plus kind of a company.”
Traditional VC partners do at most three to five deals per year
“Most partners at Atta Sequoia, IQ, Accel, etc. Will do, right? Because they build deep conviction, they spend a lot of time with their companies, and after investing also, they'll take a board seat they'll talk to their companies once in two weeks at least, an…”
Accel India initially invested 70 lakh INR for 10 percent of Flipkart
“And we ended up getting like first investment was 70 lakh for 10%.
And then we put in another money.
And so we, then the deal was to put another two crore for 10%.
And then we had another option of getting five percent at additional investment, but by then Tig…”
Accel India invested only $2.5M to $3M total into Flipkart
“We as a fund, we invested only I think two and a half, three million in that company.”
Kahn: Accel is by far the most active VC in Indian agritech
“Excel has been by far the most active. In the space,”
Reddy: Why Blume passed on Swiggy's predecessor Bundle
“Similarly with Swiggy, when I can't remember which two founders I met on the rooftop of UB, but they were selling more of a courier aggregator. It's called Bundle, which is the original name of the company. It's still used today. And I said, no, I don't think …”
Subramanian: Amagi took zero primary capital in early 2021 Accel deal
“So incidentally in 2021, early 20 21, we did a deal with Axel, Norwest and others only as a secondary transaction. We said, we don't need the money. So we didn't take any primary in the company at that point in time.”
Swaroop: Bizongo's last round valuation reached around $980M to $990M
“So Bizongo at last round valuation was around nine, ninety million or nine, eighty million.”
Swaroop: Accel invests in India across three funds totaling nearly $6B
“In India, we are essentially investing out of three funds, not just one. So we have the six 50 India fund. We have Axel growth fund, which is 1.3 billion, which was also raised in January. And then we have a four billion dollar leaders fund or a late stage fun…”
Swaroop: Accel passed on spacetech startups Agnikul, Pixxel, and Skyroot
“I really like the space tech space, but I did not invest in Agni cool or pixel or sky route.”
Swaroop: Accel portfolio company BlueStone is going public
“Actually Bluestone, one of our companies is also going public.”
Ahluwalia's angel investments include Airmeet, inFeedo, Rocketium, and Affable
“We invested in Airmeet as the first check along with Axel. We invested in Infido along, you know, with Y Combinator, and then after a few months, Tiger Global came in along with Jungle Venture. Similarly, Rocketium, Affable, we invested in, and this journey ke…”
CleverTap Raised Two Venture Rounds With $0 ARR in 30 Months
“The first 30 months, we were building the core product. There was zero error in the company. And guess what? We raised two rounds of funding during that time. So we had some very good investors. We had Axel and Sequoia that backed us during that time.”