Search giant Google has joined the Band of Angels in India as an institutional investor.

Band of Angels is a bunch of Angel investors looking to invest in early stage businesses in the areas of IT products & services, retail, high end BPO, biotech & pharma, Internet, media & entertainment and leading edge technology in telecom & embedded domains.

Other Band of Angels’ institutional members include Lightspeed Venture, Punjab Venture Capital Ltd, SIDBI Ventures and Naukri.

Typically, the Band of Angels looks at investing from $100,000 to about $1 million, and exiting over a three-to-five period through an IPO, M&A or strategic sale.

Google’s move to join the Band of Angels as an institutional investor is in line with the high profile the company has been taking in India.

As the Business Standard reports,

In addition to being an active direct investor in companies, Google has also invested in three early-stage funds — Seed Fund, Erasmic Fund and VentureEast TeNet Fund in India