Betterinvest raises $350k from angel investors

CHENNAI: BetterInvest, has raised a pre-seed round of $350k from Chennai-based angel investors, including Suresh Krishn, MD of Isha Homes and President of CREDAI, TN, as the lead investor.

Other notable names include Manoj Poosappan - JMD of Renaatus Projects Private Limited, and Tamil actor Kathir. With this, BetterInvest will be formally opening up to over 3000 retail investors, who have requested early access.

BetterInvest is an alternative investment platform that empowers retail investors with access to asset classes that were previously accessible to only the wealthy 1%.

The Chennai-based start-up is co-founded by Pradeep VS with Sedhumanikandan, who headed Marketing and Partnerships Herotalkies prior to BetterInvest, and Sriram Anax, who previously built products at Vedantu and Clickpost.

While BetterInvest has diverse asset classes, from private debts to commercial real estate to give wide choices to retail investors, the first asset class will be “Revenue-Based Financing (RBF)” for retail investors to invest in content that is already sold to OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. BetterInvest claims to be the first brand to offer investment in content sold to OTTs as an asset class.

“India’s awareness and maturity in terms of retail investments are seeing a significant power-shift, especially post-COVID. As more of the millennials and Gen-Z seek more informed decisions on financial growth, a significant chunk of this population is becoming retail investors, now looking for avenues beyond the standard financial asset classes to invest in. This has been a key factor in adopting alternative investment spaces such as revenue-based financing, among the younger population,” says Pradeep,Co-founder & CEO, BetterInvest.

In a post-pandemic world of content distribution and consumption, OTTs have dominated as the go-to platform for movies to monetize.

With a rich experience in this space (through Herotalkies), BetterInvest understands the opportunities presented in the content and OTT industry and brings to the table industry and domain experts, who analyse, vet, and de-risk every offering.

Alternative investment has a market potential to grow to Rs 1.50 lakh cr every year which is 10% of the financial savings by Indians.

According to a recent report, Retail investors’ shares in NSE listed companies reached an all-time high of 7.42%, as of March 2022.