In April 2014, Himanshu Kapsime was frantically hunting for funds for his fledgling startup ShaadiSaga, a one-stop online wedding planning solutions provider. While the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) graduate was in talks with a couple of investors, in June-end a friend introduced him to Niraj Singh, founding partner of Outbox Ventures, an investment firm that specialises in seed funding and early-stage support for startups.In early July, Singh called Kapsime to his office in Vasant Vihar, Delhi, for a business pitch. The closed-door meeting lasted for over two hours; rather than brainstorming or strategising, the duo spent the morning rewinding to some hilarious snapshots of their hostel life. They met again after a week; this time to sign a deal. Singh, an IIT-D alumnus from the 2007 batch, invested Rs 32 lakh in the startup of Kapsime, five years his junior at the institute."It's a blessing to be well networked, especially for startups," says 25-year-old Kapsime. "It makes your initial journey a hell lot easier." Like Kapsime, his batchmate from IIT-D, Bhuwan Arora, too, met up with Singh, who took a hard look at his plans to scale his startup ReadersDoor, an online community for book lovers which has now been rebranded as Oditty.me. Within 20 minutes, Singh was convinced. He decided to invest Rs 25 lakh at their next meeting that took place in a couple of days.Of the 10 angel investments made by Singh, five are in startups run by his IIT-D juniors, four in businesses founded by grads from other IITs, and just one in a venture started by a non-IIT alumnus. While the investment in each startup ranges between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 60 lakh, Singh has invested under Rs 5 crore so far."It's not network but net worth. It pays to be connected, personally as well as professionally," says 31-year-old Singh who himself has turned entrepreneur with Spinny, an online marketplace for used cars.Singh admits that he may be emotionally attached to his alma mater, but says that his business decisions are based on hard-asnails business logic. "At the end of the day you are investing money, so you have to be prudent," he says.Over the past couple of years, like Singh, a slew of IITians has been systematically funding the ventures started up by the grads of their respective alma mater. The logic is simple: The odds of the next big thing coming out from an IIT are more attractive than from most other educational institutions. "Therefore, entrepreneurs from these institutes receive the maximum support and investment, placing them well to actually have a better shot at success than others," says Ganesh Nayak, who heads investor relations at LetsVenture, an online platform for angel investors that has enabled 37 startups to raise about $10 million so far.New angels coming to LetsVenture are often keen to first look at startups from their alma mater, he adds. Since big successes — think Flipkart and Snapdeal — have come out of IITs, the willingness to bet on entrepreneurs from these campuses is high. While a few angels proactively make themselves available to their alma maters, most startups need a platform to identify alumni and get discovered by them.Nayak believes that the trend of seniors investing in juniors is one of the ways to sustain the karma. In some ways, successful alumni are paying it forward.In the financial capital of Mumbai, Zishaan Hayath too is peddling the karmic cycle. The IIT-Bombay graduate from the 2005 batch has made over two dozen angel investments, more than half of which are in startups run by IITians from his alma mater. Ask Hayath about the reason for his propensity to invest in startups run by grads from IIT-Bombay and he throws a oneword answer after a long pause: "Network," mutters the 33-year-old co-founder of Toppr, an online test preparation startup. Because he knows these entrepreneurs through his network, "it becomes easier for me to understand, and relate to them", adds Hayath, who is also the founder of Powai Lake Ventures, a Mumbai-based angel investment club that has most of its investments in IIT-Bombay startups.Nitin Saluja, cofounder of tea café chain Chaayos, was two years junior to Hayath in IITBombay. Both met for the first time in 2003 during a college festival managed by Hayath. After that, they would sporadically bump into each other, but a bond had already developed.After college, they worked together in a New York-based company Opera Solutions for a little over a year. In 2008, Hayath left the job and cofounded Chaupaati Bazaar, a mobile commerce marketplace in Mumbai. The duo stayed in touch. Saluja too soon moved on and in November 2012 launched Chaayos.In early 2013, Hayath contacted Saluja. It was 7:30 in the evening; Saluja was already late for the birthday party of one of his IITBombay friends and pleaded his wife to get ready in 10 minutes. "He [Hayath] called and asked about how my venture was taking shape," recalls Saluja.By the time his wife was ready with her makeup, Hayath had decided to invest some Rs 2 crore, along with his group of angels at Powai Lake Ventures. "He is super quick," says Saluja, who raised another $5 million from venture capital firm Tiger Global Management in May this year. Saluja believes that networking works only when it gets converted into a relationship. "On its own, it doesn't work."It invariably begins, though, with the network — and with a success story within it. Abhinav Choudhary remembers the first time he met Snapdeal cofounder Rohit Bansal as a 22-year-old student in March 2013. The duo arrived at a Café Coffee Day outlet near the IIT campus in Delhi. Over cappuccino, the two, both of whom had a Computer Science degree, relived their IIT-Delhi hostel days.Choudhary and Bansal met again in early April, this time at Snapdeal’s office in Delhi; Bansal offered to invest in Smartprix, a price comparison startup cofounded by Choudhary along with batch mate Hitesh Khandelwal in December 2011."It was unbelievable, a turning point in my life and my startup," says Choudhary, now 24. The IIT-Delhi graduate from the 2013 batch started his venture during the ninth semester but couldn't find an investor in spite of trying hard for several months.Snapdeal's Bansal has also invested in Routofy, an online travel planning startup that has cofounders from IIT-Delhi. Bansal has reportedly also made investments in three IITBombay startups: Shipler, TinyOwl and Bewakoof. When contacted, Snapdeal declined to comment. An email from a Snapdeal spokesperson said: "Unfortunately, we will not be able to participate in this story."Snapdeal rival Flipkart too has its skin in the game. Cofounders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both from IIT-Delhi, have reportedly made investments in seven startups, of which four are in IIT-Delhi grad-run ventures. An email sent to Flipkart didn’t elicit any response.If Smartprix's Choudhary got funded over a cappuccino, his junior by two years at IIT-D Ronak Gupta did it over a few glasses of lager.Ronak, who graduated from IIT-D in June this year, met his senior by a year Abhishek Gupta in Noida last November. Both knew each other since college days when Abhishek was working on his startup project Zumbl and Ronak was preparing the prototype of his future product. They would regularly go out to watch movies and have frequent sleepovers at a common friend's home, resulting in an everlasting camaraderie.So when the duo decided to catch up over beer, Abhishek brought along his startup cofounder Nikunj Jain. The trio had a great time over eight bottles of beer, talked about their respective ventures and Jain asked Ronak to come for another meeting at his office in a week.The next meeting turned out to be a formality. "The moment I entered his [Jain's] office, he said 'Yaar main to paise daal raha hoon’ [Buddy, I am putting in my money in your startup]," recalls Ronak, who had cofounded Routofy, a travel planning portal that compares and combines flights, trains, buses and cabs in one search, with connections all the way down to the smallest towns and villages. In March this year, Routofy raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Jain and Snapdeal's cofounders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.Ronak points out the investment is only the beginning; the advantage of having senior alumni as funders is that they can also serve as mentors. "As most of such investors [angels] are first-generation entrepreneurs themselves, their thinking, ideals and goals align with those of their juniors," he says.Beer, it would seem, has proven to be a lubricant for many a deal — at least those involving Nikunj Jain. Anirudha Gupta, cofounder of online travel community Tripoto, first met Jain, his IIT-Delhi senior, at a pub in Connaught Place in central Delhi last October. On a balmy Sunday afternoon, after a few mugs, both started talking about their common interest: spiritual teacher Osho.Exhausted after discussing spiritualism for an hour, the conversation inevitably veered around to the materialistic path: Gupta started sharing his business plans about Tripoto; Jain was listening. "It was then that he proposed to invest," recalls Gupta, who got angel funding from Jain in October 2014. This March, the Delhi-based startup raised its second round of funding led by IDG Ventures India.Jain claims to have a method to his investment style. "My heart helps me connect with my kind of people, but it's the brain that makes the hard, financial calls," says the 26-year-old entrepreneur and angel investor, who has made eight investments so far totaling under Rs 3 crore; half of them are in startups run by IIT-Delhi grads.Jain is investing with his eyes open, aware of the likelihood of some of his money going down the drain. Sure enough, one of the startups he funded has all but failed. But as he says, "Business is all about hits and misses, trial and errors. If you don't take risk, there won't be any gain."Though the lead in terms of investing in alumni startups has been taken by IIT-Delhi and IIT-Bombay grads, other IITs are also catching up. Like, for instance, IIT-Roorkee.When Prasoon Gupta, an IIT-Roorkee grad from the 2009 batch, decided to raise angel funds for his second startup Sattviko in February last year, he was flooded with offers. At least eight of them were IIT-Roorkee alumni, from different batches. Overwhelmed by the response, the 28-year-old closed his funding within four months. Sattviko has raised Rs 2 crore in angel funding till now. "80% of your success is because of networking, and the rest is the business idea and the team," says the cofounder of the Delhi-based food chain that specialises in Vedic and vegetarian food prepared without onion and garlic. And it's not always the seniors who tend to be the investors. In Sattviko, for instance, Rahul Gupta, oneyear junior to the Sattviko cofounder, was the first to invest.It was a ragging session that brought the two Guptas together. Since then, the duo had stayed in touch and when in October 2013 Prasoon met Rahul at his Barakhamba Road office in New Delhi, the latter decided to invest. "When Mark Twain said that familiarity breeds contempt and children, he forgot to add one more byproduct: funding," says Prasoon, bursting into laughter.Down south at IIT-Madras, the IITM Startup Fund, created through a donation of $6,00,000 from IITM alumni in 2013, has funded over 27 technology startups incubated at IIT-Madras. Tamaswati Ghosh, chief executive of IITM Incubation Cell, says that IIT-Madras alumni are intimately aware of the entrepreneurial ecosystem on campus, as well as the various technology and knowledge innovations. "This means that promising startups are spotted and nurtured early on, through mentoring and other initiatives," she says. Moreover, the alumni are also aware of the structured checks and balances in place in IIT-M, which ensures the factor of trust, essential for creating confidence in ventures. "Today, networks are indeed the oxygen for startups," she adds.Rahul KR, who is pursuing a BTech from IIT-Madras, is the founder of Clozerr, an app to store loyalty cards of one's favourite restaurants, which was nurtured at the IITM incubation cell. "Apart from team, idea and execution, what plays a key role in the success of a startup is the access to the right set of mentors," says Rahul.Other premier non-IIT institutes too are leveraging the alumni network. Consider, for instance, what's keeping Raju Reddy, an alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, busy. The founder of California-based Sierra Atlantic, an offshore enterprise applications and outsourced product company that was sold to Hitachi in 2011, has so far made nine investments in companies founded by BITS Pilani grads.Reddy claims that BITS prepares students to succeed as entrepreneurs better than any college in India. "Hence as an angel investor, I improve my odds significantly," says Reddy.There's little doubt, though, that the IIT tag goes a long way in securing funding. Shiju Radhakrishnan, a BTech from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala who followed it up with an MBA from SP Jain Institute of Management & Research in Mumbai, will grudgingly agree. The 34-year-old founder of iTraveller, a cloudbased travel discovery startup that allows users to plan, customise and book their holidays online across 450 destinations worldwide, had to toil for a good two years before he got hold of an angel investor."The only red flag that I couldn't turn green was my non-IIT background," shrugs Radhakrishnan, who managed to close a round of series A funding of $1 million in December last. After working for over 10 years as a supply chain management and technology consultant in various companies such as Wipro and Cognizant, Radhakrishnan started iTraveller in early 2012. "I had the degree but didn't have the pedigree [IIT]," he grins. For two years, the startup survived on the savings of Radhakrishnan and money from friends and family.Experts, though, caution that the network — IIT or any other — can only provide the momentum, and can't take you all the way. Sushanto Mitra, founder and chief executive of Lead Angels Network, says that while networking can open doors and establish the initial references, if the product or service does not deliver its promise, the initial gains can be lost quickly. Lead Angels is an alumni-focused angel network started by Mitra, C Amarnath and Bipin Kumar from IIT-Bombay in 2013. Of its eight investments, five are in IIT alumni companies and the network has chapters in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.Doubtless, support — and not just financial — from alumni of top technology institutes is just the kickstart young entrepreneurs need. In the West, premier institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University have honed angel investing into a fine art. In 2010, Stanford alumni along with a clutch of venture capitalists founded Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, which seeks to beef up the Stanford startup community by fostering relationships amongst entrepreneurs and alumni investors. And in 2013, Swati Chaturvedi, an MS from MIT, cofounded the Angel Investors Group for MIT alumni, which has grown to close to 300 MIT alumni and has showcased over 30 startups. For good measure, Chaturvedi holds a bachelor's degree in architecture from IIT-Roorkee's 2000 batch.Clearly, there's something about an IIT, as entrepreneurs thriving in its ecosystem will heartily agree.