Indian Angel Network Announces Strategic Partnership for Intellectual Property with Worldwide Academia Industry Network (WAIN)

Indian Angel Network, India’s first, and arguably the world’s largest angel network, has formed a strategic partnership with Worldwide Academia Industry Network (WAIN). The partnership will provide IAN access to path breaking intellectual property and innovation, further strengthening IAN’s continuous efforts in nurturing innovation and supporting entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country.

WAIN, officially launched in 2016, is an initiative launched by CL Educate Limited, Asia’s largest edu-corporate to bring together a host of stake holders who play a crucial role in creating a fertile innovation ecosystem in the country. The objective of WAIN Platform is to provide interlinked opportunities to both academic institutions and companies to work together in areas such as 'Research and Innovation', 'Academia-Industry Development Programs' and create an innovation ecosystem for growth in India. The platform provides opportunities of corporate sponsored open research in Indian institutes, corporate funded research scholarships, for spotting application-oriented skilled talent and promoting transferable knowledge from academia to industry.

“It gives us immense pleasure to be partnering with the veterans of the ‘Start-up’ ecosystem in India. We stand to gain from the immense industry & corporate experience of IAN’s over 460 investors. In addition, I feel we will be able to encourage budding innovators to scale up by showing them the path to funding in the future through the IAN platform,” said Satya Narayanan, founder and chairman, CL Educate

This partnership will enable Indian Angel Network to leverage access to young researchers, intellectual property and innovation talent through the WAIN ecosystem. Furthermore, IAN will bring in its own expertise in providing experienced mentorship and will support WAIN in its drive to create the innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country.

Padmaja Ruparel, cofounder, IAN said, “Innovation is bubbling at all levels - right from the student level. Today, India’s university ecosystem is starting to breed path breaking solutions for not only India but for other parts of the world as well. With its partnership with WAIN, IAN hopes to catalyse innovative startups from the universities providing them money, mentoring and market access.”

Wainconnect.com already has over 13,000 innovators including students and faculty working on over 3400 innovations. These come from top government IIT, IIIT, IIM, as well as leading private universities with significant corporate support through CSR and research budgets. About 25 out of these innovations are at the fundraising stage. Wainconnect aims to enable 1 million innovators by 2020.

Indian Angel Network has been a pioneer in seed and early stage investing. It has now launched a Rs 450 crores VC fund making it now, the single largest platform for seed and early stage, where entrepreneurs can raise from Rs 25 lakhs to Rs 50 crores (with co investors).