Kunal Shah, Cred’s founder, and CEO shall likely be recognized as the Shah of angel investing in 2022. Based on the most recent Venture Intelligence reports, Shah yet again ranked highest in seed funding supporting the most ventures in a year, with 67 investments this year.
Meanwhile, Shah seemed to be lowering his investment activity in contrast to the previous year, where he contributed to approximately 96 deals.
This is the consequence of a prolonged funding winter, which has sucked off private equity and venture capital investment in the startup ecosystem.
Interestingly, premature transactions jumped at an extraordinary pace in the year, whereas late-stage transactions dropped by half compared to last year.
Among Shah’s large investments is the eLearning unicorns Unacademy, Ananth Narayanan’s, unicorn Mensa Brands, the bike taxi service Rapido, and the logistics aggregator Shiprocket.
In the year, Shah is followed closely by Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Even Bahl and Bansal lessened their funding rate from the past year, executing approximately 34 and 30 projects, respectively. Both Bahl and Bansal engaged in 64 deals last year.
Aman Gupta, founder and chief marketing officer (CMO) of Boat and Shark Tank India jury, followed the Snapdeal co-founders. Gupta, who entered the list this year, raised his investments from seven in 2021 to sixteen this year.
Others among the top 10 comprise Karthik Bhat of Force Ventures, Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash, Varun Alagh of Mamaearth, and Maninder Gulati of OYO.
Sandeep Nailwal of Polygon also appeared on the list, having raised his funding activities from three contracts a year ago to 15 in 2022.
Sujeet Kumar of Udaan continued in the top ten this year, but his contributions fell from 22 in 2021 to 15 this year.
How did the super angels of 2021 fare this year?
Due to a rise in deal count from six in 2021 to nine in the year, Anupam Mittal, owner of Shaadi.com and People Group, who was one of the top ten angel investors last year, did not appear on the ranking this year.
Unacademy’s Gaurav Munjal and Jupiter’s Jitendra Gupta, on the other hand, saw a massive decline in business investment, leaving them off the list this year.
Munjal’s investments dropped from 18 to eight this year, whereas Gupta secured only five contracts, dropping from 18 in 2021.
Gupta’s Jupiter, which was previously evaluated at more than $710 million (about Rs 5,800 crore), generated barely Rs 40 lakh ($48,000) in operating cash flow in its second full year of business, according to Moneycontrol.