In an interview to Economic Times, Sumir Chadha, Senior Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India, explains why.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.
The year 2006 was very good for most of the private equity and venture capital firms but this is unlikely to be replicated this year. The year 2007 might just turn out to be a low investments one, not just for Sequoia but for the entire industry. Also, with a lot of investments last year, it is important that companies and investors give time for these investments to work out. This year may not witness that many deals but will put some of the deals that happened to test. This year will see how many of the deals, struck last year actually turn out to be intelligent investment decisions.
...From an investment perspective, 2006 has been a good year for us. We have made a number of investments and some of them were late stage deals. Idea Cellular, in which we invested $45 million was a big deal that we struck. In fact, we made an investment of $100 million this year and that is quite a lot considering that the funds are long term in nature. Out of the two funds that we have right now, $70 million came from our second fund and $30 million came from our first one. Since we operate in both private equity and venture capital space, this amount of investments is quite a lot.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.