CAN was founded and commenced its operations in January 2015.
CAN is a new Angel Network, an initiative by Anoop Mathur. It’s two chapters – Mumbai & Delhi are focused on Technology & Technology enabled deals. CAN’s mission is to accelerate seed stage start-ups through fundraising support and customer discovery. Its members are expert technology professionals from large enterprises in India.
The networks goal is to invest in seed stage companies. Members may agree or may not agree to invest as a group. While there could be collaboration on screening & evaluation, members exercise autonomy in making funding decisions. CAN is the only platform that provides start-ups an opportunity to form relationships with CAN members which could result in potential business opportunities besides investments.
CAN members possess a broad array of business domain experiences and technology skills they bring to bear in helping to screen and evaluate potential portfolio companies.
CAN members also serve as a valuable resource for guidance and advice to entrepreneurs and their businesses once an investment is made. CAN is not an investment fund, but rather, a network of investors who make individual seed investment decisions after working together to evaluate candidate companies.
"Investor's Speak"
Besides Capital, the kind of tight mentoring engagement CIO Angel Network members endow with the entrepreneurs, literally can’t be bought just off the shelf. Our member network of mentors, investors & CIOs is unparalleled in the ICT industry. We have investor members like Manish Choksi President - Home Improvement, International and IT Asian Paints Limited, Srinivas Tata CIO at Adani Ports & SEZ, Subodh Dubey Experienced Business Oriented CIO, Shailesh Joshi Head Corporate IT & CIO at Godrej Group Bharat Banka Ex CEO Aditya Birla PE, Suneel Aradhye Group CIO - RPG Enterprises, Ganesh S. Iyer Strategy, M&A, Business Leader, Anthony Thomas - Ex CIO Vodafone and many such luminaries.
Investor Member Quotes
“CIO's & CTO's who have the expertise of Transforming Business with the use of Information technology & developing a Systemic process in their Enterprises to ensure that Ideation is nurtured and taken to its rightful conclusion of delivering business value, have imbibed an innate skill of analyzing start-ups in the various aspects like the technology of the innovation, the skill of the people driving the innovation and the capability of the ecosystem that is required for its short term and long term success. CAN, is therefore well placed to help the Start-up Ecosystem for mentoring and guidance for ensuring the success of their solutions/services. „
- N Jayantha Prabhu
- CTO, Essar Group and Founder member of CIO Angel Network.
“CAN is a win win platform -for tech start-ups gaining from the experience and expertise of CIOs besides just meeting with their funding needs and for CIOs it provides an opportunity to identify new age innovative technology solutions that can be effectively leveraged in their organizations and sphere of work.„
- Kalpana Maniar
- President & CIO Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd.
“CIOs have been playing vital role in providing their enterprise competitive edge by leveraging on innovative solutions. Thus CIOs over a period of time have mastered the art of evaluating solutions not just from the technical superiority perspective but also its application to business process for maximising throughput. CAN is the One and Only platform where young enterprise or startups would get access to collective wisdom of leading CIOs of the country with global exposure. Associating with CAN would certainly be a fundamental step by startups towards no less than assured success. „
- Daya Prakash
- Former CIO, LG Electronics & CEO, ADP Infosystems
“CIOs with multi industry experience are in a unique position to evaluate various IT products and services as they have the experience of what works and what does not in a corporate environment„
- Venkat Iyer
- CIO of a large manufacturing organisation
“Its encouraging to witness firsthand the incredible ideas being innovated by energetic entrepreneurs. As a CIO, this also gives me an opportunity to remain continuously updated with the innovation ecosystem in technology.„
- Jagdish Belwal
- CIO, Tata Motors, CIO since 2009. Previously Head of CRM DMS
“After you start up, moving to the next gear needs experienced navigators; for enterprise use cases who best to provide the impetus than the CIO? CAN is a platform that startups can leverage for mutual benefit„
- Arun Gupta
- Ex-CIO with 30 years of multi-industry industry experience, advisor, coach, and mentor
“The idea of CAN germinated on the back of rapid disruption occurring in enterprise markets by startups, and who better than CIOs can mentor them. CAN members group consists of the largest buyers of technology in India. With their sheer influence they can help startups build the business scale. We are looking to mentor, incubate & fund around 25 startups in a year.„
- Pankaj Agrawal
- Sr Advisor - Deloitte, Board of Mentors - Reputed VC Fund (ex-CIO, CISO - Telecom, e-Gov)
“With most of the startups operating the tech space, CIOs with their deep knowledge of IT and the business environment in which they operate and which they enable are best suited to judge the potential of a startup, mentor the budding enterpreneurs with their knowledge and help them with their professional connects.„
- Sunil Gupta
- ED & President, Netmagic
“CAN is a very unique group of Angel Investors who have extensive experience of evaluating and procuring IT. They possess deep understanding of the business environment in which tech start-ups need to operate. Techie entrepreneurs typically come out with innovative ideas and products but usually lack the understanding of how that could address the problem of Enterprise. This missing link is fulfilled by CAN !!„
- Advisor to Grant Thornton for Technology and Risk Consulting, Board of Mentors of a reputed VC Fund, Mentor to 3 mid-size CEO’s
Quick Enquiry
Entrepreneur’s passionate desire to succeed is not enough to achieve success; it needs to be coupled with capital. Spending too much or raising very little capital both can end up with running out of money & lead to premature death of an idea.
