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Mumbai Angel was started to provide a good eco system to promote entrepreneurship in a city of 15 million people like Mumbai.In a span of 3 years they have significantly helped the startup community to grow, be it with investments, mentoring or strategic support. YourStory brings to you an exclusive interview with Amit Grover, one of the key drivers of the network.

Please tell us about Mumbai Angel Network, the team and vision of the network?

Mumbai Angels was started in November, 2006, with the efforts of highly motivated individuals including Sasha Mirchandani, Prashant Choksey, Praveen Chakravarthy, Manoj Maheshwari, Ranjan Kapur and Anand Jhaveri. They had been lamenting about the lack of a good ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship in a city of 15 million people like Mumbai. They decided to stop complaining and organise themselves into a group to provide financial assistance, mentoring and advise to entrepreneurs to help them get their plans off the ground.

My association with Mumbai Angels began in December, 2006, when I joined Mr Gulu Mirchandani's office, Chairman of Mirc Electronics Ltd and also a member of Mumbai Angels. Since then, I have been involved in all activities including deal screening, deal closure and mentoring for Mumbai Angels.

What sectors are you looking at?

We are looking at all kind of sectors for investments, including technology, mobile, education and healthcare. Our key criteria remain great teams and large business opportunities rather than specific sector. Overall, we prefer businesses with low capital requirement. In the last 3 years, we have invested in diverse sectors including Reverse Logistics (logistics solutions) Dhama Apparel (climate control gear) and Intrends (beauty and cosmetics products).