Atal Malviya

Atal Malviya is a London-based entrepreneur and angel investor who is CEO and founder of Spark10, an early-stage accelerator he launched in 2015 that bills itself as "India's first European accelerator." Before Spark10, he founded and exited a VC-funded data-analytics startup, and worked with large technology organizations including Oracle, SAP, and Network Rail UK. He is an alumnus of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and Ashridge Business School, where he has also served as a Research Fellow.

Spark10 was built alongside a founding team of accelerator veterans, most notably Jon Bradford — widely described as a "godfather" of European accelerators and associated with Techstars, Ignite100, and Eleven Accelerator — as well as Paul Smith and several India-based partners. The program launched its India operations in Hyderabad (Gachibowli / HITEC City corridor, at the Engineering Staff College of India), running an intensive 13-week model that provides seed capital, workspace, mentorship, and access to a global investor network. At launch the team announced ambitions to invest across many startups over its first years and to help produce "the next generation Dropbox or Uber" from the region.

Across Spark10, Malviya operates as a partner and lead investor, focused on the UK–India cross-border opportunity and on early-stage companies in AI, machine learning, health/med tech, and smart technologies. He is an active writer and commentator on angel investing (via Medium and BW Businessworld/BW Disrupt) and takes advisory-board roles at portfolio companies.

• Invests at seed / early stage in startups that already have a minimum viable product, typically through the Spark10 accelerator (average checks around ~$50K per company).
• Sector focus on AI/ML, health tech and med tech, IoT, analytics, mobile/internet, and enterprise/consumer software, with some FinTech exposure.
• Strong UK–India corridor thesis — connecting Indian early-stage startups to European accelerator expertise, mentors, and follow-on investors.
• "People invest in people": he weights the founding team heavily and looks for co-founders with complementary skill sets. In his own words on why angels say no, a single founder "with no team around" has "very thin" chances of getting a serious investor on board.
• Wary of pitches heavy on buzzwords — he reads over-reliance on fancy jargon as a sign the team lacks someone who can lead the business/communication side.