Shanti Mohan left a long tech career to build the plumbing for Indian angel investing

When Shanti Mohan started LetsVenture in 2013, raising an angel round in India was a private favour, not a process. Founders chased warm introductions; angels relied on whoever happened to be in their WhatsApp group; terms were improvised and paperwork was reinvented every time. LetsVenture set out to turn that closed, relationship-gated step into a structured, transparent marketplace, and then to own the financial infrastructure that sits around it.

Two decades in technology, then a platform

Shanti Mohan came to entrepreneurship late and deliberately. She spent close to two decades inside the technology industry, including a long run at NetApp, in engineering- and business-leadership roles, building enterprise products and selling them to large customers. That is an unusual background for a fintech founder, and it shows in the company she built: LetsVenture is less a consumer app than an enterprise-grade system for moving money and equity between sophisticated parties. By the time she founded it, she had also been close to the angel ecosystem as a participant, which is where the problem became obvious.

Why she built LetsVenture

The gap was structural. India had thousands of would-be angel investors and a fast-growing pipeline of seed-stage startups, but no neutral, credible place for the two to find each other and transact. Deals depended on proximity to a handful of networks in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi; diligence was inconsistent; and the legal mechanics of a syndicate, pooling many small cheques into one clean entry on a cap table, were rebuilt by hand every round. LetsVenture’s thesis was that early-stage fundraising deserved the same standardisation public markets take for granted: a common venue, vetted listings, repeatable documentation and a process both sides could trust.

The cold-start problem

A marketplace for trust is one of the hardest things to start, because it has to solve a chicken-and-egg problem in the least forgiving environment possible, money. Credible startups will only show up if serious investors are already there; serious investors will only show up if the deal quality is high. On top of that, LetsVenture had to build the unglamorous scaffolding, curation, syndicate structures, compliance, documentation, that makes a notoriously relationship-driven activity feel safe to do through a platform instead of a personal network. The early years were spent earning that credibility one syndicate at a time.

From matchmaking to the full lifecycle

The more durable strategic move came after the marketplace worked. Rather than stay a place founders visited once to raise a round and then left, LetsVenture expanded into the recurring infrastructure of private-market investing: structured angel funds, and an equity-management stack, cap tables, ESOP administration and liquidity, brought together under the brand Trica. That shift is the heart of the business. Matchmaking is episodic and easy to disintermediate; cap-table and ESOP management is continuous, embedded in a company’s operations for years, and very hard to switch away from. LetsVenture moved from being useful at one moment to being load-bearing across a startup’s life.

How LetsVenture makes money

The model has two complementary engines. The marketplace and fund vehicles earn platform and fund-administration fees on capital raised and deployed; the equity-management software (Trica) earns recurring, SaaS-style revenue from companies managing their cap tables, options and investor records. The first builds the relationship and the data; the second monetises it continuously and creates the lock-in. As a privately held company LetsVenture does not publish detailed financials, and it is owned by its founders and investors rather than listed, so there is no public net-worth figure for Shanti Mohan, and any number circulating online is guesswork rather than disclosure.

LetsVenture timeline

• Until 2013, Nearly two decades in technology, including a long stint at NetApp, in engineering and business-leadership roles.
• 2013, Founds LetsVenture in Bengaluru as a structured online angel-investing platform.
• Growth years, Builds out vetted syndicates and structured angel funds; becomes one of India’s best-known early-stage funding platforms.
• Expansion, Adds an equity-management stack, cap table, ESOP and liquidity, consolidated under the Trica brand, extending the company across the startup lifecycle.

The competitive landscape

In Indian early-stage funding LetsVenture sits alongside AngelList India, Venture Catalysts, Inflection Point Ventures and Mumbai Angels. Its differentiation is not deal flow alone but the surrounding system: standardised syndicate mechanics plus the equity-management layer most rivals do not own. The competition for the matchmaking step is intense; the competition for being a startup’s permanent cap-table system of record is far thinner, which is exactly why the company moved there.

More founder journeys: women founders in fintech · women in fintech database · women in SaaS database · women founders in Bengaluru.

What founders can take from it

The instructive part is the sequencing. LetsVenture started by attacking the single most painful, least-structured transaction in the ecosystem, the angel round, and used that to earn trust and data. It then expanded into the chronic, recurring need around it, where switching costs are high and the relationship is permanent. Solve the acute pain to get in the door; own the embedded infrastructure to stay. It is a template for any founder building in a relationship-driven market that looks impossible to systematise.

Frequently asked questions about Shanti Mohan

Who is Shanti Mohan?

Shanti Mohan is the founder and CEO of LetsVenture, the platform that industrialised angel investing in India. She spent close to two decades in the technology industry, including a long stint at NetApp, before founding LetsVenture in Bengaluru in 2013.

What does LetsVenture do?

LetsVenture connects startups with angel investors through vetted, structured syndicates and funds, and runs an equity-management stack, cap tables, ESOP administration and liquidity, under the Trica brand, so it serves a company across its life rather than only at fundraising.

What is Shanti Mohan’s net worth?

LetsVenture is a privately held company owned by its founders and investors, so there is no disclosed valuation or public net-worth figure for Shanti Mohan; her stake is a private founder holding rather than a listed, market-priced one.

What can founders learn from LetsVenture?

Win the hardest single transaction in a market to earn trust, then expand into the recurring infrastructure around it. The angel round got LetsVenture in the door; cap-table and ESOP management is what makes it hard to leave.