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T-Hub, which leads India's pioneering innovation ecosystem, on Thursday announced the launch of its redesigned funding programme T-Angel to cater to the startups funding needs amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

T-Angel will be supported by angel investors who will collectively invest up to Rs 50 lakh in each of the qualified startups.

T-Angel is a 45-days acceleration programme for which 15-20 tech startups with the leading-edge solutions in the various sectors will be shortlisted.

The programme for the second batch of chosen startups will commence in July 2021. Startups will be shortlisted from applications received after an extensive screening process by a committee of investors and mentors.

Applications will open Thursday (June 17) https://bit.ly/3vzdbuq, and will close on 30 June 2021. The programme will focus on understanding and resolving two key constraints or pain points of a startup's business operations that are hindering their chances of raising capital. Startups across India can apply to be a part of the programme.

"Even though there has been a substantial increase in startups' ability to raise funds, only a small percentage of them are successful in raising funding from angels. We realized that the success percentage can considerably increase if entrepreneurs are aware of what the angel investors are looking for. T-Angel's existence has been smartly tailored to solve this issue," said Ravi Narayan, CEO of T-Hub, said.

"T-Hub believes that there are plenty of technology startups that are investment-ready provided they learn the fundamentals from an investor perspective. With startups from the previous batch raising funds, the programme has bridged a good percentage of gap between the investors and the startups," he added.

During the programme, T-Hub will do an in-depth assessment of the startup's business plan. Based on this, a customized work plan will be developed for each of the startups, with specific interventions. Post that, the shortlisted startups will undergo intensive training of five online sessions of two hours each from subject matter experts/consultants who will help in making them investment ready. However, the frequency of consultations will depend on various factors and will be jointly decided by the programme and participating startups. The outcome of this will be a refined business plan and investor pitch deck.

A five-member Investment Committee (IC) will evaluate onboarded startups and decide on the investments. Additionally, other investor members of this programme can also join the IC deliberations. Rs 50 lakh will be invested in three tranches.

The first batch of startups from the T-Angel programme received strong support in terms of refining their business model and investor pitches. This enabled selected startups with innovative solutions to raise funds, despite the ongoing pandemic, from key investors like TechStars, Lets Venture, and Phoenix Business Solutions. The programme not only helped them with the investor connects, but startups have also raised over Rs 10 crore funds since the end of the programme.