Exclusive: Alok Mittal, Angel Investor and Entrepreneur Found his True Calling through an Internship

Alok Mittal is an angel investor known for his love for entrepreneurship. So much so that he started a company, sold it only to join a Venture Capital firm and then returned to entrepreneurship which is his ‘true calling’.



For someone who had no idea what to do in life during college at IIT Delhi, Mittal has surely come far, this time starting his second venture called Indifi which is a financing platform for small businesses. “In the 1990s, you had two career choices- Engineer and Doctor. The turning point for me was an internship that I did with a startup that started at the IIT Delhi campus. Two months into the internship, I realized that this is what I want to do,” Mittal told Business Insider.


When Mittal returned to the country in 1996 from Berkeley College, after finishing his masters’ degree, all he had was stars in his eyes, but he never gave up.

He started working and after two years, he realized that it was time and with his friend he started JobsAhead, which got acquired by Monster.com in 2005.
Championing Venture Capital

After selling his company, he got together with his investors and realized that startup financing was a huge problem waiting to be solved, which resulted in him contributing to being the founding members of Indian Angel Network.

Mittal says that being an investor happened by chance and he was better for it, because it led to where he is, now “I remember my first interview at Canaan Partners where I told the partner that I’m going to be here maximum for two years but that didn’t happen,” he ended up leading the India operations of Canaan Partners for almost nine years before quitting.

Never forgetting his first love, Mittal always had entrepreneurship on his mind and the opportunity to get back to it came in 2014,”At Cannan, we were at a pivotal point where either we had to expand our portfolio and create a India-specific fund or exit the country. I had to make that decision and my wife came to my rescue and said that I should do something of my own,” Mittal quit and so did the Venture Capital Firm who sold its portfolio to JP Morgan for $200 Million.
Supporting the Ecosystem

Mittal was working on a few ideas but nothing had materialized until he met Siddharth Mahanot, who became his co-founder at Indifi.

Mittal says that entrepreneurship isn’t easy the second time around, “At this stage of my career I don’t have a clock running, which was the case for the first company. I’m in this for atleast 15 years as we find a lot of avenues when it comes to SME financing,” says the 45-year old who has spent his entire career either finding jobs or money for people who deserve it.