The Venture Intelligence Blog

TheDeal.com has a video interview with Prof. Anil Gupta of the Smith School of Business who feels that, once the credit crisis eases, we are likely to see a wave of inbound deals into India and China driven by attractive valuations. He feels large companies which already have a presence on the ground are likely to lead the wave. The recent acquisition of Indo Tech Transformers by GE seems to indicate this as well. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

Outlook Business has an article describing the start-up plans of Air Deccan founder Capt. Gopinath's second company. With the help of a headhunting firm, the serial entrepreneur quickly shortlisted six candidates to head his logistics venture. Jude Fonseka, who had spent 22 years in logistics major FedEx, fit the bill, and was appointed CEO. Gopinath’s brief to Fonseka was simple: "Build the best team." Over the last 18 months, Foneska has put together a 200-strong team with many years of experience in the express logistics business. Many of those who have joined are former FedEx, UPS and DHL employees. Some of Gopinath’s ex-colleagues from Air Deccan’s start-up team, including Pritam Phillip and Vijaya Menon, are also on the team. Mohan Kumar, ex-CFO of Air Deccan, is the financial consultant for the project. ...His team is working hard to make that happen. Construction is in full swing to build a 100-acre express cargo hub at Nagpur. Cargo handling facilities are also

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The Mint has an interview with Naren Gupta, Managing Director of Nexus India Capital. I think India will be affected more than what we have seen so far. Everybody feels that they are the better fund and in India that’s particularly the case because nobody has results. All we have are portfolios and companies that we are working with. In the US, it’s easy. If you look at people’s returns over the years, you can see who is good and who is not good. But in India that’s not the case, so it makes it much harder. And that’s where the experienced LPs in the US are able to tell the difference, see the early signs. Now it’ll really show if you’re good or not because ultimately the vote will come from the LP. ...Yes, we have made capital calls since then and we are pretty fortunate. We had a meeting with all our LPs a month back. Our view is it’s a better time to fund companies now than two years back. We have gone over our strategy with our LPs, they are all on board with what we’re doing now.

Paddy Hirsch of Marketplace has a set of videos explaining the various basics of the global credit crisis using a whiteboard. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

From Reuters' report on how a record number of M&A deals were canceled during the year. Most investment bankers would like to forget about the disastrous year that was 2008 -- even as they think about the fees that could have been. More deals were withdrawn in 2008 than ever before, and with overall mergers and acquisition activity down 35 percent around the world, you can bet bankers would like those deals back. Over 1,100 deals were canceled during the year, up from just under 800 in 2007, according to Thomson Reuters data. The total value of withdrawn deals for 2008 was nearly $800 billion, and banks lost more than $815 million in fees. Some of the notable ones included BHP Billiton Ltd's $188 billion offer for Rio Tinto Plc; the proposed buyout of Canadian telecommunications giant BCE Inc by a group of private equity firms; and Microsoft Corp's unsolicited bid for Yahoo Inc. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of in

Extracts from a Roundtable discussion organized by Economic Times, featuring Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, Tata Sons executive director R Gopalakrishnan, JP Morgan India CEO Kalpana Morparia and Temasek India chairman Manish Kejriwal. Manish: Things are bad. As in every downturn, it’s always exaggerated. In a bull market, you feel better than you should. In a market like this, you obviously feel worse than you should. Till August-September we didn’t realise the extent to which the slowdown had come. The fact is we are part of a global economy and we are not decoupled. Six months ago, you started seeing iron ore pile up in Chinese ports. These were early signs that one had to pick up. The next two quarters are going to be difficult. Having said that, I think India, unlike China, is not that dependant on the global markets. There is still a very strong domestic market. ET: What are the three key actions that the government needs to take to bring 9% growth back? Kal

Yasheng Huang, a professor of international management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has an interesting article in WSJ. The fundamental problem, and a mortal bias of economists, is a fixation with simple measurements -- especially GDP data. Ask a professional economist how many provinces China has and you are likely to draw a blank stare. But ask him what the GDP growth of China has been and he'll quickly be able to tell you that China has grown at a double-digit rate for 30 years and that at this rate China will overtake the U.S. by 2035 (or some other date). GDP-centrism is endemic, and often comes at the expense of deeper analysis. Just look at the enthusiasm with which economists and analysts greeted Goldman Sachs's famed "BRIC" report forecasting dramatic booms in Brazil, Russia, India and China -- a report based on little more than fifth-grade mathematics. This obsession with China's impressive GDP growth often ignores discussion of what's caus

Venture Intelligence has published an updated edition of its Investment Banking Handbook & Directory. The handbook is as an authoritative and comprehensive guide for both entrepreneurs and Private Equity / Venture Capital firms to choose Investment Banking Partners. The directory section consists of an alphabetical listing of all active India-focused Investment Banks including contact name, address, phone numbers, e-mail and website details. To download the Handbook, please visit http://www.ventureintelligence.in/ibdirectory.htm

Vishal Tulsyan , CEO of Motilal Oswal Private Equity , which has invested 50% of its $125 million first fund across eight companies including dairy firm Parag Milk, “reverse logistics” firm RT Outsourcing and Rajasthan-based NBFC AU Financiers, recently spoke to N. Sriram of Venture Intelligence. Some excerpts: Venture Intelligence: What is your outlook for the PE market in India over the next 2-3 years? Vishal Tulsyan: Deal flow will slowdown. In the last two years, many companies raised money, not because they required money but they wanted to set a benchmark valuation and eventually go public. Going forward, you would see a fewer number of such deals happening. Companies with genuine need for outside capital, who have the right mix of capital structure in place, will be the ones out there to raise money. We will see fewer pre-IPO deals because we will not see a strong capital market. Exits will definitely become difficult. Investments that happened in the last 2-3 years e

Growth, growth and growth says this article in Economic Times. This shift in the nature of the investor has been driven by scorching growth in the micro finance sector over the last two years. MFIs, especially the larger ones, most of whom operate as non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), have been consistently growing at 200%-plus. SKS and Spandana would both fall in this category. Some like Bandhan in West Bengal have grown at an astounding rate of 600% per annum. However, Bandhan is yet to open itself to PE players. In fact, this fiscal, a cluster of large and mature micro finance entities appear set for over 100% growth as inflationary trends have triggered higher working capital needs for micro loanees. In the first quarter of fiscal 2009, these MFIs have bettered their half yearly disbursals of FY08. In other words, the demand for working capital needs by MFIs has outstripped the quantum that small PE investments or SIDBI could so far provide. Hence the bid to woo mainstream

Extracts from Economic Times' interview with Ajay Bijli, CMD of multiplex operator PVR. I, like some of my peers in the industry, hold the view that the entertainment industry is largely recession proof. It is mostly dependent on the supply of good content. At the beginning of the year, during the Indian Premier League (IPL), production houses delayed releasing their movies, that was when footfalls in multiplexes witnessed a drop. Again during the terror attacks in different cities, movie buffs didn’t feel safe enough to go to multiplexes. But in the last few months it has become clear that whenever good movies have been released, movie buffs have come to the multiplexes. The recent release Rab Ne Bana De Jodi is a case in point. I think it’s not economic slowdown that has affected sales of tickets, it is the quality of content which governs footfalls generated in the multiplex. Fortunately, India is still a growth story and to a certain extent the slowdown is more psychological t

In an video interview to Private Equity Online, Jonathon Bond, Head of fundraising and investor relations at Actis (the UK-based emerging markets specialist which closed a new $2.9 billion fund earlier this month), says the current global economic crisis presents EM PE funds with an unique opportunity to "come of age". According to him, returns in Asia, Africa and Latin America will be relatively resilient over the next two years. "LPs will say we need to find growth and in most emerging markets, growth would be between 2-8%". While the holding periods might be longer, for "LPs looking for growth and positive returns and have pensioners to pay, liabilities to meet," emerging markets would be a good bet over the next 2-3 years. Provided they are disciplined, adopt strategies appropriate for local conditions and manage the expectations of the investors, EM PE funds will have an opportunity to prove to LPs that they deserve a 20-30% allocation in their inter

Business Today has a Cover Story on the path forward for Kingfisher Airlines. Kingfisher Airline’s yet-to-be revealed balance sheet may be weak, but there have been enough developments in recent days to help improve sentiment. The reduction in ATF prices and abolition of import duty of 5 per cent on the fuel will, indeed, help in stemming the losses. “If the sales tax on ATF is reduced to 4 per cent, Kingfisher will not have any loss in December for the month. There will be no cash burn and we will save between Rs 300 crore and Rs 400 crore a year on account of saving in taxes, which is 25 per cent on an average now,’’ says Raghunathan. Aware that he cannot get states to slash sales tax rates on ATF to 4 per cent, Mallya has stepped up the campaign to get the Centre to bring ATF under declared goods category so that it becomes taxable at 4 per cent. He has dangled a carrot, too: “If they cut taxes, I will cut fares.’’ The Kingfisher brass is quick to point to the benefits of the integ

Business Today has an article profiling the journey of SKS Microfinance thus far and looks at the challenges ahead for the VC-backed microfinance company. In just under 10 years, Vikram Akula has built SKS into one of the biggest brands in rural India. A survey that pitted SKS versus two big financial brands—ING and LIC—showed that borrowers preferred SKS in overwhelming numbers. Even those who weren’t borrowers opted for SKS because of its reputation. “There’s no one else that people trust,” explains Akula. “Everyone interested in rural India has to come to us. If they don’t, they’re out of the game.” ...SKS and Akula do have admirers in the industry, including Vijay Mahajan, Chairman of BASIX and a guru of India’s rural economic development. Mahajan feels that Akula has made an invaluable contribution to Indian Microfinance. “He has taught the sector what is scale and sustainability while ensuring social impact,” he says. Also, attracting capital is not easy, especially in today’s s

From Press Release Leander Sport Pvt. Ltd., a sports management and marketing company promoted by Indian tennis legend Leander Paes, has received financing from multiple angel investors. Investment bankers Viedea Capital Advisors was the advisor to Leander Sport on the transaction. "We expect to do a larger institutional fund raise for the company in 8-12 months to fund growth and expansion", said Uday Disley, Director of Viedea Capital. Leander Sport offers clients’ sports education services such as content creation, content management & distribution, and sports media properties, aimed at the active life style segment. The company also offers sports infrastructure consulting services ranging from concepts & designs to implementation & facilities management. Traditional sports management areas such as sponsorship sales, brand licensing and asset management are also a part of the company’s services portfolio. Aside from Leander Paes, the company currently manage

From Press Release: Deepak Cables (India) Limited, a Bangalore-based maker of aluminium conductors for Transmission & Distribution application, has raised Rs. 200 crores from IDFC Private Equity. With this investment, Deepak Cables has raised a total amount of Rs. 285 Crores, following the Rs.85 crores raised from UTI Ventures in June 2008. o3 Capital was the sole advisor for the deal. Bangalore based Deepak Cables was founded by K. Surya Rao in 1982 as an aluminium conductors manufacturing company and over the last two decades has grown to become one of the largest T&D EPC players in the country. Deepak Cables with its two aluminium conductor manufacturing plants at Tumkur and Pondicherry and in-house design and engineering capabilities is one of the few players having the expertise to execute projects end-to-end: from design to commissioning. The company has an client list of leading public sector T&D entities such as KPTCL, PGCIL, MSEDCL, Discoms and several prestigiou

WSJ's Life & Style section has come up with a new indicator for US unemployment: Beards. Facial hair is showing up on more former corporate types. It's one of those tiny luxuries unleashed by unemployment, a time when people are briefly released from workaday habits and may wish to take stock of their lives before setting out anew. Al Gore grew a beard after losing the tumultuous presidential election of 2000. Neatly trimmed, it looked cozy and anti-establishment as he pursued creative projects on his way to the Nobel Peace Prize. Scott Berger, a 35-year-old investment analyst, stopped shaving in October after being laid off from hedge fund Laurus Capital Management. "It's something you can't do in the corporate world," he says. He does, however, cut his facial hair closely with a beard trimmer, pledging, "I'm not ever going to look like a lumberjack." ...For most office workers, the look remained too daring -- until they had nothing left to

After Sequoia Capital's much publicized "RIP Good Times" presentation , other VCs are now generating "good PR" for "rallying their troops". Arvind Sodhani of Intel Capital in TheDeal.com : "What we have now is a very broad based decline. It would not surprise me if we saw a fairly large GDP decline in the U.S. and a prolonged recovery after that. We view this as an opportunity. We will continue to lead and not waver. We will find the good investments and help them. We are leading our deals, by and large. That's different from 2001, when we were not leading deals. We had to rely on other VCs back then. The VC community pullback will not impact us at all. It will create the opportunity to do more investments for us." ...While in October some VC firms used scare tactics in communicating with portfolio companies about the impact of the economy on startups -- most famously Sequoia Capital with its "R.I.P. Good Times" presentation --

NYU professor Nouriel Roubini who had accurately predicted the economic crisis as far back as 2006, predicts more gloom for the US economy in 2009 in this Fortune survey of eight market experts. We are in the middle of a very severe recession that's going to continue through all of 2009 - the worst U.S. recession in the past 50 years. It's the bursting of a huge leveraged-up credit bubble. There's no going back, and there is no bottom to it. It was excessive in everything from subprime to prime, from credit cards to student loans, from corporate bonds to muni bonds. You name it. And it's all reversing right now in a very, very massive way. At this point it's not just a U.S. recession. All of the advanced economies are at the beginning of a hard landing. And emerging markets, beginning with China, are in a severe slowdown. So we're having a global recession and it's becoming worse. Things are going to be awful for everyday people. U.S. GDP growth is going t

WSJ.com's Deal Journal has an interesting post following up on the asset sales managed so far by Lehman and AIG. It isn’t working out exactly as the government may have intended. Potential buyers are hoarding their cash, and the recessionary environment is hardly welcoming for fully valued bids on the assets of troubled companies. As a result, as of Wednesday, Lehman has raised only $3.5 billion through asset sales, and AIG $254 million. The problem at the core of these asset sales is obvious: The only valuation that counts these days is the one that reads “dirt cheap.” On Wednesday, Banque Nomura France, a unit of Japan’s Nomura Holdings, bought Lehman’s French investment-banking assets for €1. That’s right. For $1.30. That for a business that has equity capital of $43.6 million, according to Bloomberg estimates. Nomura previously snapped up Lehman’s European, Middle East and Asia operations, not including the French arm, for $225 million. Barclays bought the U.S. businesses–incl

Outlook Business has a set of invited articles by leading investors as part of its cover story on Private Equity. Some extracts: Akhil Gupta of Blackstone Also, since liquidity has dried up globally, the price of money will go up—and so will the price of private equity. Today, there is less money available with limited partners (institutions that invest in private equity firms), hedge funds, mutual funds, individuals and private equity. When anything is in short supply, its price goes up. This means we (private equity) will be looking for higher returns. Our bar for investing will be higher and we will show a lower appetite for risk. Therefore, we will do deals at lower valuations than we did in the past and we will be more selective. Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital The environment will be much better for control deals. In the next couple of years, the definition of core competency will become more genuine. In a growth economy, core competency can just be ‘I’m a good entrepreneur’. Now,

TiE Entrepreneurial Summit 2008 (TES 2008) is Asia’s largest Summit that brings bringing together a galaxy of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, policy makers, academia, industry, thought leaders and other major stake holders. TES 2008 will focus on retail, real estate, healthcare, manufacturing, social entrepreneurship, clean tech and mobile. TES 2008 has been crafted to provide a comprehensive perspective on all aspects of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs with unbeatable track records of success behind them – and now stellar names in industry - will lead the summit across 43 impressive sessions, 13 stellar plenary sessions, 22 high-powered panel discussions and 8 inspiring My Story sessions outlining the future of entrepreneurship. Speakers Include: Azim H Premji Prof. C K Prahalad Dr. Vijay Mallya Nandan M Nilekani For more information, please visit http://www.tiesummit.org

Political analyst Prem Shankar Jha writes in the Economic Times that the results of the recent state elections indicate that Indian voters are finally attaching a significant weightage to development-related parameters. The Congress’ success in retaining Delhi for the second time is relatively easy to understand. At 12% per annum since 2003, not only does the state have one of the highest growth rates in the country and therefore an abundance of new jobs, but it has in Sheila Dikshit a chief minister who is scrupulously honest, easily accessible and a good administrator. In short Delhi is to the Congress what Gujarat is to the BJP. Once may be happenstance, but twice reveals a pattern. Sheila Dikshit’s success in Delhi has, therefore, strongly reinforced the message that was sent out to all political leaders by Narendra Modi’s success in retaining Gujarat in December last year for the second time. Modi won because Gujarat too had been enjoying a 12% growth rate since 2003 and, whateve

Bangalore-based mobile payments company JiGrahak Mobility Solutions has been selected as one of the 34 "Technology Pioneers" for 2009 by the World Economic Forum. The WEF names such companies from around the world each year as among the "innovators of the highest calibre whose technologies will have a deep impact on business and society". Helion Ventures had invested $2.2 million in JiGrahak in August 2006. While JiGrahak is the only India-headquartered company on this year's list., another tech firm that does a lot of its development out of India - Nivio - has also been named. Venture Intelligence had helped in spreading awareness among the Indian VC community for this program. The full list of Technology Pioneers 2009 is available here .

Here's an "interesting" graphic from WSJ that shows how India is clearly the leader - in high interest rates that is. India is clubbed with Japan (whose rates rule at 0.3%!!) as the countries that have cut the least since Aug. 07. (Hat Tip: Paul Kedrosky ) Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

Peter Rip, General Partner at Crosslink Capital, has a post on how US is currently looking like a classic "restart opportunity". The current discussions (December 2008) in Congress and the Press resemble the discussions original investors have about failing companies. How big should the bridge loans be? What are the terms? How deep are the cuts? Are they deep enough? Who's fault is this? ...What happens in a restart? First, existing stakeholders get wiped out; The $7T of ‘new money’ is accomplishing that. Second, management gets changed. November 4 did that. We now have new managers who have a four year ‘vest’ and, probably, a ~100 day cliff. ...A VC Restart would also look for alliance partners to strengthen the offering. Perhaps a merger with another competitor with complementary skills, e.g. China? Merging with China might resemble YHOO+ MSFT – distance and culture conspiring against success. We might also argue about valuation, as there are dramatic differe

In an article for Economic Times, noted IAS officer Srivatsa Krishna points out some historic regulatory blunders that led to the US credit crisis . First, at the heart of the current financial mess is what are called credit default swaps (CDS), a little-understood insurance cover, which feigned to be everything but an insurance cover (for otherwise it would need to come under regulatory purview), for an even more esoteric underlying financial instrument, namely mortgage derivatives. CDS constituted as much as a $60 trillion market or four times the entire national debt of the United States, before they came crashing down. And no one knows till date who owns them or their exact number or transactions in them, for there was no depository to track them. ...Secondly, on the last day of the last session of a lame duck 106th session of the US Congress in 2000, the last agenda item introduced the euphemistically titled: ‘Commodity Futures Modernisation Act’, which removed the various capit

CNBC-TV18 has an interview with Shankar Sharma, Vice-Chairman and Joint Managing Director of First Global, in which he points to the inverse relationship between the US Dollar and the fortunes of Emerging Market stocks. Unless you have the dollar weakening and weakening substantially, there is going to be no bull market and emerging markets. That is a simple one line, simplistic way of looking at emerging markets. Through the 90s the dollar was more or less the strong currency and there was only one market to play which was the US market. EMs went nowhere, India went nowhere, Russia was a dog market, Asia went through some degree of upswing between 94 and 96 and then they all got crushed. Now you saw from 2002 dollar weakened, the EMs did well. The dollar strengthens, EMs don’t do well. It is as simple as that. ...Just looking at the way the world is going, you have pretty much the entire world in recession now. Looking at the China output numbers, looking at India CMIE (Centre for Mo

Outlook Business has an interview with Promod Haque, Managing Partner of Norwest Venture Partners, in which he says the need for VCs to provide more support to existing portfolio companies - since exits will take longer to happen - will result in fewer new companies getting funded. For smaller funds, the challenge is to either support the company through the slow years or sell out, which is not a great option at a time when valuations are down. So, what’s going to happen is that you’re going to have to put that $200 million to work across fewer companies, and that means you will not have enough capital left to be diversified across many companies. This is a challenge that we’re going to see in the US, and I am sure that we will see it in India as well at some point. ...India will pretty much experience the same thing. Liquidity here is tight too. The IPO market is shut, and mergers and acquisitions are not happening either. That said, companies will get funded, but the bar will be hig

Mastek CEO Sudhakar Ram has an article in ET on how the current financial crisis could be a boon for "second and third wave" of IT Services companies. When we dig into the reasons for the crisis, while we can blame blind optimism and greed, at a more fundamental level it is a failure of systems. The quality of underwriting at the point of loan origination had failed. Systemic controls that ensure uniform and consistent application of underwriting rules could have done much to avoid bad loans. Better controls and risk management systems governing individual firms as well as the entire financial system would have helped to track the quantum of leverage and the risks associated with it — both from the perspective of board governance and regulatory oversight. All these point to a desperate need for a massive overhaul of systems — and a substantial investment in new IT initiatives. For too long, large institutions have been trying to get away with spending 80% of IT dollars just

Extract from the minute book of Bank of Rajasthan's AGM proceedings (See Page 7 of 10). 5. What action we are taking against BNP Paribas and Avenue Capital as they have gone back on their commitment to subscribe to the preferential issue of shares? We are taking all the steps to increase the profitability of the Bank, which would be reflected in the share price. We are not taking any direct action against these investors but one day they would themselves regret the decision not to invest in our Bank as per their commitment. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

Dhirendra Kumar of mutual funds research firm Value Research has an article describing how the current woes of the Real Estate sector are largely self wrought. In the last three to four years, the real estate industry, with the implicit collusion of housing finance providers, has indulged in an unprecedented loot of house buyers. The 'demand-supply gap' that supposedly produced the price rise was an illusion. Here's how it was created. Basically, developers kept jacking up prices and since banks kept financing purchases at higher and higher prices, an illusion was created that there was enormous demand, no matter what the price. The buyers were of two kinds. One, the real end-users who were panicked into buying because they were told that prices would go on rising. These people saw prices rising at the rate of 5 to 10 per cent a month and were desperate to buy before houses became unaffordable forever. The interesting part was that vision of ever-rising prices acted both a

Business Today has used a recent research paper titled "The current liquidity crunch in India: Diagnosis and policy response" by Jahangir Aziz, Ila Patnaik and Ajay Shah, to review why India got sucked into the global liquidity crisis. Their hypothesis in brief: in trying to manage the exchange rate, growth and inflation, the central bank had kept the system chronically tight on liquidity. Several Indian companies that had been using the London money market fell short of dollar liquidity in mid-September. So they borrowed on the money market and took US dollars out. At the same time, corporations were liquidating their holdings in mutual funds. Mutual funds, too, then started making claims on the money market, leading to a colossal shortage of liquidity. This was accentuated by factors such as advance tax payments and sale of dollars by RBI to prop up the rupee. Plausible? Perhaps, but that may not be the only explanation for the domestic turmoil, say finance heads of compa

For an overseas investor researching "hot sectors" in India remotely, it looks like the easiest thing to do would be to list services that the government is expected to deliver and, then, invest in private Indian companies which are filling the yawning gaps. Physical Infrastructure, Healthcare and Education come to mind. And given that the government is finding it "challenging" to deliver on its fundamental job of providing Law & Order , it's not surprising to see Businessworld come out with a cover story on the booming market for private security services. Much of the demand for private security has been precipitated by the series of bomb blasts that have rocked India over the past decade. India is now one of the world’s most terror-prone countries, with a death toll second only to Iraq, says a report from the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington. India’s crime rates, already some of the highest in the world, are also rising, as is the incidence

CNBC has a slideshow on the resurgent business of maritime piracy. India (with 10 hijackings this year) also features as part of the dubious list of "8 worst pirate-infested places on earth" headed by the Gulf of Aden (which separates Somalia from Arabia). Piracy remains a serious threat to life and commerce, with 199 attacks tracked by the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre through the first three quarters of this year. Many more attacks, most of which take place near shore, go unreported. ... Nigeria – 24 Attacks As the Danish container vessel Claes Maersk (pictured) sat docked on April 17, it was boarded by 10 pirates who came alongside in speed boats. The crew fled to the ship's accommodations and locked themselves inside. Two shore watchmen hired for security remained absent from the scene until the pirates had left, according to IMB, and Nigerian authorities took no action after the crew reported the attack. Indonesia – 23 Attacks Twelve

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Businessworld has an article which indicates that the damp Diwali sales could leave builders with no option but to cut prices - something they have been desperately resisting. Developers had hoped Diwali and the festival season would turn their fortunes. Many of them had borrowed funds at very high interest rates — ranging from 20-36 per cent — to complete projects in time for Diwali or to service previous debt. But very few sales have been reported. ...“There is no substantial cut in the builders’ rate cards,” says Arvind Pahwa, managing director of JP Morgan Asset Management Real Estate. “There is some reduction, but considering prices have gone up 300 per cent over three years, this is not good enough,” he adds. ...Some builders have taken the cue and are planning lower prices to move sales. A developer that has several hundred ready residential homes in central Mumbai, disclosed Vakil, has decided to let the broking house do a price discovery and market his project, after witnessi

Ms. Gail McManus, Founder of Private Equity Recruitment, Europe's leading independent private equity recruiter - will join two other expert speakers for the VC workshop at the Pan-IIT conference . See more info here . Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

ABC's technology industry columnist Michael Malone makes a passionate pitch for freeing of regulations governing IPOs that are "killing" the VC industry in that country. We are looking at the current crisis in Venture Capital and assuming that it is self-inflicted. But the more likely reason is that the industry has taken so many external shocks in the past seven years -- Sarbanes-Oxley (which has killed new IPOs because of its onerous costs to young companies), full disclosure laws (which have driven smart people away from serving on corporate boards), and options expensing (which has all but erased the prime motive for people to join new start-ups) -- that it can't help but be in bad shape, a once-robust industry reduced to a sick, shrunken shell. [And now, of course, there's talk of raising the capital-gains tax rate again, which will be the final nail in the coffin of venture capital.] ...And the biggest roadblock of all is that they have taken away the all-i

I like to view and read people who have strong opinions and are, more often than not, right . It therefore found it quite interesting to view a YouTube Video of Peter Schiff, who runs US-based brokerage Euro Pacific Capital , who had forecasted a crash in the US as early as 2006. The especially funny parts in the videos are the ever-bullish views of his co-panelists on various TV shows. (Hat Tip: Paul Kedrosky ). Related links: Here , here , here , here and here . Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

An interesting podcast titled "Bailing Out Wall Street" here based on a panel discussion organized by the Commonwealth Club. I especially liked the comments of Prof. Jonathan Berk from the Stanford Univ. who speaks about the long term "moral hazard" damage that the bailouts have caused. He says the inevitable regulations that follow the crisis would do better to focus on providing the right incentives rather than trying to "outsmart" investment bankers. For instance, if Lehman Brothers and other mega IB firms were still partnerships (which meant unlimited liability for the partners), it would have ensured far better self regulation by their owners. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

Fortune has an article on the boom in secondary deals. The problem is straightforward. Portfolio managers have strict guidelines for asset allocation (Harvard's endowment, for instance, is offloading $1.5 billion in private equity to get back to its 13% target.) As the public markets have collapsed and the prices of liquid assets have plummeted, the value of the overall portfolio, or the denominator, has shrunk. But allocations to venture funds, buyouts, and real estate, which aren't priced often, have held - at least in theory. So a slice that once accounted for 10% of a portfolio now might suddenly account for 15%. ..(The unwinding of PE portfolios) is starting to happen, with Harvard, Duke, and others unloading alternative-asset portfolios or portions of them. If they aren't already, say industry insiders, practically every big endowment or pension fund soon will be putting something up for sale. ...Some buyers are bidding as little as 50 cents on the dollar; earlier th

The PanIIT Association and the Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA) are organizing a conclave for partners of VC/PE firms titled " Building the human side of a VC/PE firm - The institutionalizing steps " The workshop will be conducted by - Prof David Brophy, Director of the Center for Venture Capital & Private Equity Finance, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor and - Ms. Anne-Maree Byworth, a veteran private equity investor who earlier worked with CDC Group. When: December 18th, 2008, at Park Sheraton, Chennai from 8:30am to 6:30pm. For Whom: For partners of private equity, venture capital, real estate, and similar funds. Institutional LP's are also welcome. Click Here for more information.

ADVERTISEMENT Indian Venture Capital Association in partnership with European Venture Capital Association is conducting a Foundation Course in Private Equity & Venture Capital December 1-3, ‘08; Delhi • Develop your professional skills • Learn from the experience of senior industry practitioners • Build relationships with other professionals As part of IVCA’s role to facilitate professional development among participants in India’s venture capital and private equity industry, and building on the success of last year’s training program, we are pleased to announce the second annual premier training program sponsored by IVCA and the European Venture Capital Association. Career development is an important component of IVCA’s mission to facilitate the development and professionalization of India’s venture capital and private equity industry. Our partnership with the EVCA is part of that commitment. The IVCA & EVCA Foundation Course for Investment Professionals will be held from De

In his "Cautiously Optimistic" post , Arun Uday of HSBC PE points out why "India is far better positioned to be first off the blocks on the path to recovery". If one considers the five major relevant economic blocks – US, EU, Japan, China and India, the former three are plagued by severe systemic issues (such as excessive leverage, low savings rate, inordinate consumption levels etc) that will take a long period of time to get resolved. Now, in comparison to China, India has some significant characteristics that will play in the latter’s favour. For starters, as is oft repeated, exports form a far smaller component of India’s GDP compared to China’s. Apart from this, India also has a lower operating leverage in comparison to China. China’s model has always been to build huge capacities, which worked very well in boom times, enabling it to attain economies of scale and enjoy great cost savings. However, in times like this, excess capacity can become a millstone aroun

Knowledge@Wharton has an interesting discussion (available also in audio) featuring entrepreneurs from BRIC countries - Shiv Khemka of the India- and Russia-based SUN Group; Silas Chou of HK-based Novel Holdings and Odemiro Fonseca of Brazil's Viena Rio Restaurantes. Khemka : From an Indian point of view, clearly export sectors will be affected. The real estate sector has taken a very severe downturn because of credit issues in the market. And naturally, demand domestically will fall. And so that's another sector that one needs to be careful about because of this heavy leverage. Any sector which has a lot of leverage would be a sector to watch carefully. In Russia, you know, the oil price being down where it is today means that the bonanza of the last few years, the boom times, are perhaps coming to an end. The savings that the Russians have wisely made over the last few years need to be now invested thoughtfully in the future. But given the strong commodity base, and the lack

Alok Mittal has triggered a discussion on VentureWoods on valuing Internet start-ups in the current environment when the enterprise value of a leading listed player like Rediff.com is just $24 million. As a bellwether for Indian internet industry, these numbers reset expectations on the entire sector and near term expectations. Naukri is just over $200M on EV, which I do believe is healthy because of their earnings (P/E ~ 20). I also wonder what series B valuations for Internet companies would be now - till 12 months back, companies with less than 200K users and zero revenues were getting $24M valuations… Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO 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. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

Pankaj Dhandharia, Partner,Transaction Advisory Services, E&Y writes in The Economic Times how pent up infrastructure demand and attractive valuations will lead a slow-but-steady pick-up in PE investments. With significant investment needed, the Indian infrastructure segment offers great opportunity. There are several infrastructure projects which are yet to achieve financial closure. As the valuations correct, infrastructure deals will attract investors. Similarly on industrials, several expansion projects have been put on hold because of the scarcity of capital and the uncertainty as to when demand growth will start to pick up again. As demand picks up and liquidity improves, these projects will come back. The activity is likely to rebound in India much faster than that in the western markets. In addition, the Indian rupee is probably at its lowest levels and any appreciation in the rupee is likely to make the returns even sweeter. Given all of this, India still is an attractive

Sandeep Singhal of Nexus India Capital, which has recently closed its second fund, writes in the Economic Times how VC investors are now facing far less competition. Short-term earning hits from capacity expansion or MTM hedging losses, or selling due to redemption pressures, are less relevant for PE. Marginal and less value-added capital has departed and a more rational and less competitive investment environment has led to valuation expectations become more reasonable. Consumption and business investment, although moderated, still remain at very attractive levels. Large opportunities do exist in the domestic market, and in exports, with greater global integration and trade flows. A young population with high aspirations, both in urban and increasingly in rural markets, India is a great destination for companies with ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ solutions. The strength and availability of world class talent, enhanced by NRI returnees and managers with global exposure, give Indian companie