The Venture Intelligence Blog

In a year thus far dominated by the mega investments in Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail Ventures, AZB & Partners topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Legal Advisor to Private Equity Transactions (in Indian companies) for the nine months ending September 2020. AZB advised deals worth $14.8 billion (across 53 qualifying deals) during the period. Davis Polk & Wardwell (which advised the multiple Private Equity investments worth $12.4 billion in Jio Platforms and Reliance Retail Ventures) and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) ($10.4 billion across 28 deals) took the second and third spot respectively. Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) ($5.1 Billion across 44 deals) and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett ($3.6 Billion across 5 deals) completed the top five.

The Venture Intelligence League Tables, the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on the value of PE and M&A transactions advised by Financial and Legal Adv…

Morgan Stanley, which was the advisor to the recent Private Equity investments in Reliance Retail Ventures ($2.3 billion so far), as well the spate of investments in Reliance Jio Platforms earlier in the year (including over $9.8 Billion from PE firms), topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Transaction Advisor to Private Equity Transactions for the first nine months of 2020. PE firms that invested in Reliance Retail in Q3'20 include Silver Lake, KKR and General Atlantic. The homegrown Avendus - which advised deals including the $225 million fund raise by Dream11.com from TPG Capital, Tiger Global, ChrysCapital and other investors - claimed the second spot with $1.6 Billion (across 18 qualifying deals). Deloitte with $752 million, JP Morgan ($700 million) and KPMG ($568 million) completed the top five for the nine months ended September 2020.

The Venture Intelligence League Tables, the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies…

Press Release: Private Equity - Venture Capital (PE-VC) firms invested $26.8 Billion (across 547 deals) in the first 9 months of 2020, shows data from Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on private company financials, transactions and their valuations. The $12.1 Billion* invested by global private equity and sovereign wealth funds in Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms ($9.9 Billion) and Reliance Retail ($2.3 Billion) accounted for 45% of the total PE-VC investment value in 2020. (*This figure excludes the $10.2 Billion in strategic investments by Silicon Valley tech giants Google and Facebook). The Reliance deals have managed to arrest the overall decline in PE-VC investment figures in 2020 to a marginal 2%, compared to $27.4 Billion (across 750 deals) in the first nine months of 2019.   (Note: These figures include Venture Capital investments, but exclude PE investments in Real Estate). 
With the mega investments in Reliance Jio coming to a pause, PE-VC investments in Jul…

Mint has a feature, quoting growth figures from startups like Mamaearth and BoAT, on how some niche FMCG brands are gaining favor among consumers and also investors, post the Covid lockdowns. 
Since June, Saama’s Lilani has begun to evaluate at least one new consumer brand investment every day. “Let me put it this way: in April, a down round was the best-case scenario for consumer brand startups; now, it’s the worst-case scenario for many," he said.  ...That these companies are not only growing rapidly but doing so with higher net margins is helping their cause at a time when investors are demanding better unit economics at startups. Last year, consumer brand startups received $295 million in capital, up from $158 million in 2018, according to data with Venture Intelligence. There are some common themes that are allowing startup brands to thrive. One, they were all relatively well-established in their categories even before the pandemic. Then, their products have now become especia…