IDG Ventures' Sudhir Sethi on the Indian VC Space

Ernst & Young’s Global Venture Capital Insights and Trends Report 2008 has an interview with Sudhir Sethi, Founder, Chairman & Managing Director of IDG Ventures India. An extract:

Ernst & Young: What were your surprises in the last 12-18 months?

Sudhir Sethi: When we raised our US$ 150 million fund and started operations in September 2006, we focused on early stage technology investments. Our focus was and continues to be in Software Products and Services, manufacturing and engineering, medical electronics, digital consumer and telecom / semiconductor sectors.

Our first surprise was the pace at which funds are vacating the venture
investment space and moving increasingly to the growth investment stage. Our intention is to dominate the venture stage technology focused sectors as an early stage fund.

Our second surprise was the extent of competition in our sectors; except for digital consumer space (internet / mobile VAS), we really do not face significant competitive pressures in our other sectors.

Our third surprise was on valuations; we find valuations in the venture stage of the technology sector extremely attractive.

Our fourth surprise was the maturity of the entrepreneur who today values relationships and value-add from a venture investor.

...In the past 18 months, we also found that venture investments in India require business model innovations to create companies and not just fund conventional deal flow; hence we funded ConnectM, a spin out from Sasken; Aujas a managed security services pure play, through an EIR Program and 3D Solid Compression, which was incubated by Stanford and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

The full interview is available 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.

EY Tops League Table for Transaction Advisors to M&A deals in 24

Moelis & Company & PwC claim the No.2 & No.3 slots Ernst & Young (EY) topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Transaction Advisor to M&A Deals during 2024, advising 34 deals worth $4.1 Billion. Moelis & Company stood second advising 2 deals worth $3.9 billion. PwC followed with 18 deals worth $3.3 billion. Citi ($2.5 billion across 1 deal) and Advay Capital ($2.3 billion across 1 deal) completed the top five. Among the largest M&A deals in 2024, Citi advised $2.5 Billion acquisition of the Indian business of American Tower Corporation by Brookfield , Advay Capital and Moelis & Company advised the $2.3 Billion acquisition of Care Hospitals by Aster DM Healthcare . Jefferies & Co., JP Morgan and Moelis & Company advised the $1.6 Billion acquisition of Bharat Serums & Vaccines by Mankind Pharma. Among the other notable M&A deals in Q4 2024, EY advised the $685 million acquisition of ITD Cementation ...

Morgan Stanley tops League Table for Transaction Advisors to M&A deals in 2020

Morgan Stanley , which advised the $10.1 Billion strategic investment by Facebook and Google into Reliance Industries' telecom arm Jio platforms (among other Private Equity investments in the company), topped the Venture Intelligence League Table for Transaction Advisor to M&A Deals for 2020. Ambit Corporate Finance - which advised 3 deals worth $4.0 Billion, including Brookfield's $3.7 Billion acquisition of Reliance Tower Infrastructure Trust - took the second spot. JM Financial ($3.7 Billion across 5 deals), Metta Capital ($3.4 Billion across 3 deals) and ICICI Securities ($3.4 Billion across 2 deals) - all of whom (along with Citi) are advisors to the $3.4 Billion acquisition of Future Group's retail related ventures by Reliance Retail, announced in August - 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 tra...

Everything you wanted to know (and some things you didn't care to know) about ChrysCapital's Ashish Dhawan

New Delhi-based private equity fund ChrysCapital is vastly different from its former avatar, Chrysalis Capital. While Chrysalis began life (in Mumbai) as an venture capital firm focussed on start-up investments, today's ChrysCapital is best know for its late-stage investments (often in already public companies). The fascinating part of this transformation is that one of the fund's original partners - Senior Managing Director Ashish Dhawan - has been firmly in the driver's seat throughout the process. It's a story that needed to be told. As a cover story. Kudos to Business Today for telling it first. Thankfully, unlike the glowing profiles that BT is famous for - including the one featuring infamous stock brocker Harshad Mehta with his Lexus on the cover - this one has a lot of facts. Some well known. And others less so. That ChrysCapital's first fund would have been a disaster but for the pioneering investment in Raman Roy founded BPO firm Spectramind i...

APEX VC Awards: Chiratae Ventures, Blume Ventures, Elevation Capital, Stride Ventures & Alteria Capital judged best funds of 2021

Press Release Elevation Capital , Chiratae Ventures , Blume Ventures , Stride Ventures and Alteria Capital were voted the top Venture Capital investors in India during 2021. The Venture Intelligence “Awards for Private Equity Excellence” (APEX) is dedicated to celebrating the best that the Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital industry has to offer. "VCs exist because Entrepreneurs exist and disrupt the ecosystem by creating new businesses. We are very excited to be part of the secular trend of tech disruption that would power India’s journey towards $ 10 Trillion economy over the next decade," said T C Meenakshi Sundaram, Founder & Vice Chairman, Chiratae Ventures , winner of " VC Fund raise of the Year " award. " We wish to thank all our entrepreneurs who have chosen to take funding from Chiratae Ventures and investors who have backed us with funds over the past 15 years in this journey. Congratulations to the entire Chiratae Ventures team and ...

VC Interview: Shailendra Singh of Sequoia Capital India

In a recent interview to Venture Intelligence, Shailendra Singh discussed some of the firm’s newer investments in the early stage segment including in the online payments space, the progress at a few existing portfolio companies and the active role the firm is playing in helping its portfolio companies scale and succeed in India and globally. Prior to joining the firm in 2006, Singh was a strategy consultant at Bain & Company in New York and before that, an entrepreneur in the digital media industry. Venture Intelligence: How does Sequoia go about identifying potential early stage investments in India? Is there anything different you are doing today than, say, a couple of years back? Shailendra Singh: There is a lot more focus on technology investing and early stage investing. In general, as you might remember a few years ago, we were doing primarily growth investing but in the past 18-odd months, we have had a very strong focus on early stage and that’s continuing. In terms...

The Venture Intelligence Blog

Search This Blog