Teenager-backed venture aims to democratise angel investing

Sateeq, an investing platform founded by 16-year-old Krishna Maggo, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding as part of its angel round from a clutch of founders and angel investors.
 
Some of the prominent angels and entrepreneurs that participated in the funding round include Himanshu Periwal (Founder, unlu); Sarthak Goel (Founder, Y-Combinator backed InVoid); Vaibhav Jalan (Smallcase); Nikunj Jain (Forbes 30-Under-30); Amitesh Sinha (Partner, SIMA Funds) and Kunwar & Amit (Founder, UnFinance).

Maggo, a 12th grader from Delhi and a 2X entrepreneur, started Sateeq in 2021 with an aim to democratise angel investing by making it accessible to every Indian so that individuals can invest in start-ups in a safe, secure and informed manner.
 
He aims to build a super app where retail investors can participate in all kinds of private investing such as start-up equity, real estate, asset backed tokens, and other asset classes.

Incidentally, the venture allows investors to put in as low as Rs 5,000 in a start-up. This is a fraction of what most of the large angel investing platforms allow wherein one has to put in a few lakhs to start with.

"Fundraising is not as easy as it seems to be. Many founders are unable to reach angel investors, who invest through traditional angel networks and they make up for a mere 0.01 per cent of total investor base in India. The rest 99.99 per cent do not get any chance to invest in the burgeoning startup ecosystem and make returns from its success,' said Maggo.

Sateeq allows start-ups to raise community funding based on compulsorily convertible debentures, which have been used by many start-ups in India to raise funds, and is also backed by an affirmative legal opinion for Sateeq from one of India’s top law firms.

Further, the 10-member team start-up is currently building tools for founders to raise capital digitally and instantly from early-stage funds to venture capital rounds.

In less than a month of its beta launch, Sateeq has on-boarded over 5,000 investors in its network and has over a dozen start-ups registered with the platform.

These start-ups are already backed by investors such as Mumbai Angels, Ivy Capital, Shraddha Sharma, Vaibhav Vardhan, Kiran Mani, Deshpande Startups & Shark Tank India.

“Our top competitor is Republic.com in the US, which is valued close to $1 billion and has helped 600+ start-ups raise over $700 million from over one million users,” he said, adding that Sateeq is looking at raising a pre-seed round in the third quarter this year.

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