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The Venture Codex

Lead Angels

A-102, Neelam Center, SK Ahire Marg, Worli, Mumbai, Maharashtra, 400030, India

Overview

Lead Invest is India's first angel network focused on IITs. Founded by a team of three originally from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay including a retired professor, a recent graduate and an incubator manager.The network members provide time and money to disruptive startups across India. Its members are successful entrepreneurs across different sectors.

Total investments
23
Lead investments
3
Investments · 12mo
4
Active investors
3

Sector focus

  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Kidbea

    Participated · Series A · Mar 2026

    Founded in 2021 and based in Noida, Kidbea designs and sells bamboo-led apparel and childcare products for infants and toddlers, including rompers, onesies, nightwear, newborn essentials and accessories. The brand emphasizes comfort, breathability and sustainability in its product portfolio. Kidbea operates an omnichannel business and recently launched exclusive brand outlets in Pune, Hyderabad and Indore as part of its offline expansion. The company reports an annual recurring revenue of Rs 100 crore and has plans to open over 100 exclusive outlets and enter more than 200 multi-brand stores in the next 12–24 months. Kidbea will also invest in product development and category expansion following its Series A raise. The company has been recognized among India’s Fast 42 brands and received the Best Kids Brand award in 2025.

  • Beep

    Participated · Series A · Feb 2026

    Founded in 2021, Beep integrates career guidance, structured learning, and AI-powered recruitment tools into a single platform. Its offerings include a career app that provides mentorship and job access, industry-aligned upskilling programs with placement support, UniBeep software for college placement management, and BeepHire.ai for fresher recruitment. The company currently hosts more than 28 live programs and claims to have facilitated over 30,000 placements, internships, and gig opportunities. Beep reports a user base exceeding 6.5 million, partnerships with 1,500 colleges, and collaborations with 7,800 hiring companies. With a focus on underserved tier-II and tier-III geographies, the startup plans to scale its user base to 5 million additional learners and onboard 150 new colleges in the next nine months. Prior to the latest raise, Beep had secured $650,000, bringing its total funding to $1.5 million. The fresh capital will primarily support expansion of its AI-powered programs and deepen institutional partnerships.

  • Fundamento

    Participated · Series A · Oct 2025

    Founded in 2020 by Ankit Durga, Megha Aggarwal, and Vickram Saigal, Fundamento has built a multi-agentic AI platform that serves as a strategic engagement layer for financial institutions. Its technology automates borrower profiling, debt collections, upselling, and other lending-lifecycle touchpoints, improving operational efficiency and customer experience for banks, NBFCs, and digital lenders. The company combines domain expertise in credit with conversational and decisioning AI to deliver personalized, data-driven borrower journeys. Fundamento plans to deepen vertical solutions within India’s BFSI market over the next year while expanding into the US and APAC, where digital lending and collections present sizable opportunities. The newly raised capital will be used to enhance the platform’s agentic capabilities and accelerate go-to-market efforts with marquee enterprise customers. To date, the startup has secured at least $3.46 million in external funding across seed and pre-Series A rounds.

  • Grest

    Participated · Equity · Sep 2025

    Grest operates a full-stack recommerce business focused on premium refurbished Apple devices, managing sourcing, refurbishment, and after-sales service to build consumer trust. The company plans to expand its direct-to-consumer sales channels, upgrade its refurbishment facilities, and strengthen its supply chain using newly raised capital. Grest previously raised about ₹16 crore (≈$2 million) in a Series A in September 2025 and is targeting ₹50 crore in revenue for FY26. It positions itself as a premium, trust-focused alternative within a largely informal and highly competitive Indian refurbished-electronics market that includes larger players such as Cashify. Grest's strategy and recent foreign investment were presented as evidence of its potential to scale while contributing to formalization and sustainability in the sector.

  • Nitro Commerce

    Participated · Seed · Jun 2024

    Founded in 2023 in Gurugram, India, Nitro Commerce provides a unified, AI-powered marketing automation suite tailored to e-commerce and direct-to-consumer merchants. Its product family includes NitroX for storefront management, Nitro Ads for advertising, Nitro SSO for single sign-on, Nitro Rewards for customer incentives, Nitro Capital for financial tools, and Nitro Recover for cart abandonment solutions. By combining these modules, the platform streamlines digital commerce operations ranging from customer acquisition to retention. The startup emphasizes advanced AI and emerging agentic capabilities to optimize campaign performance and personalize shopper journeys. With fresh capital, Nitro Commerce plans to accelerate platform-led growth, bolster its AI features, hire additional staff, and expand internationally. The company did not disclose revenue or user metrics in the announcement.

Team