Can I still raise from a SEBI angel fund now that angel funds take money only from accredited investors?
Yes, but the angels behind the cheque now have to be accredited. Under SEBI's revised angel fund rules (September 2025), a new angel fund can raise only from accredited investors, meaning people who pass a net-worth or income test certified by an exchange or depository, and it needs at least five of them before its first close. Funds registered before 10 September 2025 have until 31 March 2027 to move over, and in the meantime cannot offer a deal to more than 200 non-accredited investors. For you this means an angel fund can put ₹10 lakh to ₹25 crore into your company including follow-ons and sits on your cap table as one line, while angels who are not accredited can still invest in you directly, just not through the fund. Ask the platform early which of your interested angels can come in through it.
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A plain explainer of SEBI's revised angel fund rules from September 2025: who counts as an accredited investor, how many a fund needs, and how much it can put into one startup.
Angel funds raise only from accredited investors (for an individual, net worth of at least ₹7.5 crore, or ₹1 crore income with ₹5 crore net worth), certified by NSE, BSE or CDSL Ventures.
A fund needs at least five accredited investors before its first close.
An angel fund can put ₹10 lakh to ₹25 crore (including follow-ons) into one investee company, with a one-year lock-in.
The September 2026 news report of SEBI moving the deadline for older angel funds to switch to accredited-only investors from 8 September 2026 to 31 March 2027.
This is the clearest India-specific explainer of the AIF trick that keeps your cap table clean: a SEBI Category 1 Angel AIF puts one entity on your cap table instead of thirty individual angels, so the signature-chasing that made a founder 'spend one to two weeks in follow-ups' for every document just disappears. It spells out the minimums (INR 25 lakh commitment over five years, cheques as small as INR 1 lakh) so you know who can actually participate through the pool.
A SEBI Angel AIF is a regulated pooled vehicle that sits on your cap table as a single line, so paperwork and future-round signatures go through one entity
It lets angels commit as little as INR 1 lakh per deal while still being a clean shareholder for you, widening the pool without cluttering the cap table
The pooled structure beats the older LLP-of-friends approach for regulatory clarity and centralized reporting
This is the concrete map of where the small cheques actually live in India: Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels, LetsVenture, plus city networks like Hyderabad Angels, The Chennai Angels, and Chandigarh Angels, each with real investor counts and deal stats so you can pick the ones that fit your city and sector instead of cold-emailing strangers.
Indian Angel Network (470+ investors, SEBI-registered) and Mumbai Angels (750+ investors, 100+ exits) are the marquee national networks that lead rounds, not just fill them
City networks (Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandigarh, Calcutta) are the fastest route to operator angels who know your local market, useful for the Anywhere Founder outside the metros
Each network runs a screen-then-pitch process, so a warm intro from an existing member beats an application every time
