The Venture Intelligence Blog

From the Press Release: The first ever Elections for the Executive Committee of the Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (IVCA) for the two year term January 2011 to December 2012 were successfully conducted with over 82% of the members exercising their votes. This is a strong endorsement of the work that IVCA has done over the year. The Members have voted the following SEVEN to represent them on the Executive Committee of IVCA (in alphabetical order): 1. Ashley Menezes, ChrysCapital Investment Advisors 2. Darius Pandole, New Silk Route (NSR) Partners 3. Niten Malhan, Warburg Pincus 4. Nitin Deshmukh, Kotak Investment Advisors 5. Satish Kumar Mandhana, IDFC Private Equity 6. Sudhir Sethi, IDG Ventures India 7. Sumir Chadha, Sequoia Capital India The IVCA Charter envisages that the Chairman is who polls the highest votes and the Vice Chairman is who polls the second highest votes. The following have been elected as the new Chairman and Vice Chairman of

From the Press Release: Swastik Roadlines Private Limited , one of the leading food cargo supply chain service providers, raised growth equity financing of around US$ 10 million from India Equity Partners in return for a significant minority stake. This is the first round of equity fundraising by the company and subsequent rounds of funding are planned. Swastik has very quickly grown to become one of the leading cold chain logistics solutions service providers in India under the brand ‘Coldex’ with a fungible fleet that is expected to cross 500 vehicles shortly. The Company offers pan-India solutions to marquee clients for both long haul (primary) movement of temperature sensitive cargo as well as intra-city secondary distribution in over 55 cities. In addition, the Company offers surface transportation for specialized dry cargo. Mr. Gaurav Jain, Managing Director of Swastik, says: “We are pleased to partner with India Equity Partners in our next stage of growth. We believe that thi

From a Businessworld article Far from being hotbeds of student-driven entrepreneurial activity, like in a Stanford University or an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), India’s B-school incubators now find themselves on the sidelines of the powerful entrepreneurial wave that is sweeping the country. During 2000-10, close to 150,000 startups have sprung up outside such incubators; 37,500 of these are in the five metros, according to Amit Grover, member of angel investment firm Mumbai Angels. Among the eight incubators the IITs and IIMs set up nearly two decades ago, SINE is tagged the most successful. Since 2004, it has incubated 35 startups, of which 20 are ‘graduated’ and are in various stages of progress. Three have shut operations due to reasons including their inability to raise fresh capital, difficulties in finding customers and gaining scale at the right time. Others have been in the incubator well beyond the incubation period of three years for similar reasons. For exam

From the profile Beginning with software for trading in agri-commodities the company has added on packages for metals and will do so for energy trading by February 2011 with the business built around the licence model.Eka has offices in the United States and in London and will soon have one in Sydney. ...With revenues of $10 million,the company is now planning to open its fourth office in Australia.The plan is to become a $100-million venture in the next five years, says Garg,who feels there is no need for further rounds of capital. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

ET has a profile following the Paras Pharma buyout. Actis bought an ownership stake in Punjab Tractors,the tractor company owned by the Punjab government."When we started investing in India,India was entirely a growth market," says Trivedi, who heads the South Asian operations of Actis."We started doing buyouts because we realised many promoter families were no longer interested in running their businesses." Yet,buyouts have been few and far between,even for Actis.According to Venture Intelligence,an aggregator of data on deals,PE funds have done 2,085 transactions in India between 2005 and 2010.Of these,just 76,or 3.6%,have been buyouts;the remaining 2,009 have been growth deals. Three PE firms stand out in the buyout space: Actis,ICICI Venture and Blackstone.Of the three,Actis leads with eight buyouts with a total deal value of $495 million.That buyout number is a fraction of the 37 deals Actis has closed in India. ...Trivedi,58,is the face of Actis in India. But

Don't miss renowned speakers including Gurcharan Das, Ex-CEO of P&G India and author of India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good , confirmed to address the 2011 Awards Function. This edition of APEX will build on the success of APEX'10, which drew over 300 participants including from Limited Partners, PE/VC firms, Entrepreneurs & CXOs from across sectors, Investment Banks, Consultants, Corporate Law firms, HR firms, etc. Among last year's highlights were an address by Ajay Piramal, Chairman of the Piramal Group, who subsequently pulled off 2010's most talked about M&A deal - the sale of the Piramal Healthcare's domestic formulations business to Abbott Labs at 9 times revenues. APEX'11 Awards Function - Evening of Feb.9 APEX'11 Awards is an unique gathering of top executives in the Indian Deal ecosystem to network, introspe

Pensions & Investments has an article on Religare's recent PE fund-of-fund acquisitions. Its strategy is to buy a majority interest in boutique investment management firms and let the acquired firm's executives continue to control the day-to-day work of investing...Religare's board has approved committing up to $1 billion to strategic investments in diversified asset management businesses globally. “We prefer majority stakes or minority stakes with a path to a majority interest,” he said. “We are looking at opportunities in Europe, Australia, other parts of Asia and Latin America.” However, Mr. Mongia expects most of the acquired firms to be based in the United States. “The U.S. has far and away the deepest and the most developed” investment management business, he said. “Particularly, if you look at the independent boutique firms, they are more compatible with our philosophy and culture.” Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading pro

From the Press Release Pragnya Fund has formed a joint venture with Habitat Ventures Ltd for developing a contemporary ‘Work-Live-Relax’ residential cum commercial development with all modern amenities at Whitefield, Bangalore. The project is ideally located close to International Tech Park (“ITPB”), on the Whitefield Road (ITPL Road). The project is based on a distinctive concept called “Villaments”, which combine the features of a villa and a high end apartment. This product is targeted at higher income families working out of Whitefield & Outer Ring Road, key technology hubs, who would like to have a villa ambience at the price of a higher end apartment. The project has obtained most of the permissions and the launch is scheduled for early 2011. This will be the first investment by Pragnya Fund in Bangalore. Pragnya Fund has been in the real estate investment business in India and Sri Lanka since 2005-06. The present portfolio of the fund includes an 87 acre integrated township

From the Press Release Funds managed by Aureos Capital have completed a $10m investment in the BSR Super Speciality Hospitals Limited (BSR), a leading Indian healthcare group. Aureos Capital Limited is a private equity fund management company specialising in investing in small and medium sized businesses in emerging markets. BSR currently owns and operates six diagnostic centres and two major hospitals across five cities in Central India. The hospitals include a 175-bed tertiary hospital (BSR Super Specialty Hospital, Bhilai) and the first specialist cancer hospital (BSR Cancer Hospital) in the state of Chattisgarh. BSR Super Specialty Hospital is the first tertiary care hospital in the region, providing thousands of patients to date with previously unattainable levels of care. BSR Cancer Hospital, the first specialist private sector cancer hospital in Chattisgarh state, is currently undergoing an extensive remodelling to increase quality and depth of its cancer care offering. BSR Hosp

From the article : The operative word in Nova’s model is ‘minor’. Need a heart bypass? Nova is not the place. But, need an appendix or a cataract removed? A stomach (or gastric) banding to lose weight? A hernia patched up? Or a facelift? That’s right up Nova’s alley. In other words, surgeries that are low-risk, don’t need expensive support systems, and where the patient can go home the same day.On average, Nova claims to bill 15-20 per cent lower than a large tertiary care hospital since, with no in-patient stay, its costs are lower. ...Of late, health insurers that insisted on a minimum 24-hour hospital stay to reimburse expenses are paying for day-care. “Insurers are no longer an impediment to doing procedures as day-care,” says Nayan Shah, CEO of Paramount, a third-party administrator for health insurers. Shah says that some insurers have a standard list of day-care procedures, while others opine anything that can be done as day-care because of “scientific advancement”, should be. A

From the article Flipkart is now the undisputed leader in the online books retail category; it sells an average 5,000 titles every day, against a couple of thousand by Infibeam. But the ride has been bumpy. Initially, Binny and Sachin approached 15 publishers, out of which only two agreed to associate with them. It took them 10 days to sell the first book, remembers Sachin. Today, Flipkart has 500 publishers onboard and another 200 publishers are waiting to tie up with them. “It took us one year to get 15-20 publishers to be on our platform, but today we have a huge back-log. Initially, we chased them and now they chase us,” exclaims Binny. ...Flipkart has been growing exponentially and expects sales to cross Rs 100 crore this fiscal, from just Rs 5 crore in 2008-09 and Rs 20 crore in 2009-10. In comparison, Rediff does about Rs 60 crore of home-shopping business. Flipkart is also increasing its investment in infrastructure, and the number of warehouses will increase from the current f

From the Press Release: Nexus Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital fund, announced today that it is launching a seed stage program called "Nexus Seed" which will help build a stronger entrepreneur ecosystem in India. Nexus Venture Partners will use the Nexus Seed program to identify and fund high potential entrepreneurs who are building technology and Internet companies. Through this initiative, Nexus will invest Rs. 20 lakhs to 2 crores ($50k-$500k) each in up to 50 companies over the next 5 years. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to submit a summary of their plans to plan@nexusvp.com . Nexus Venture Partners is the leading venture capital fund in India with total fund size of $320 million. Apart from investing in early to early growth companies, Nexus has also been incubating and investing in seed stage companies since 2006. These include Sedemac, Scalarc, Vdopia and several others. Many of these companies have gone on to raise further financing and build leadersh

From the Press Release: Microqual Techno Ltd. one of India’s leading telecom infrastructure providers has raised growth funding of Rs. 40 crore from a wholly owned subsidiary of The Headland Asian Ventures Fund 3 Limited (HAV3), a fund advised by Headland Capital Partners Limited (Headland) (formerly HSBC Private Equity (Asia) Limited). This is the second round of funding received by Microqual which is a comprehensive infrastructure solutions provider for the Indian telecommunications sector. Its clients include all major telecom carriers. The funds will be utilised for expansion in Bangladesh, Nepal, Africa & other emerging markets, strategic acquisitions, and implementing newer technologies. The company had secured the first funding in July 2007 from IndoUS Venture Partners, JAFCO Investment (Asia Pacific) Ltd. and BTS India Private Equity Fund. Ernst & Young India were the exclusive financial advisors to Microqual for this round of Series B funding as well as the Series A

Edited extracts from Press Release: Real estate-focused PE investor Pragnya Fund has formed a JV with VGN Developers for a residential development project in Chennai. The project, covering an area of 6 lakh square feet at Paruthipattu on the Poonamalli- Avadi High Road, beside State Highway 55, will cater to the affordable housing segment of the market. The launch is scheduled for mid-2011. From the Venture Intelligence PE-RE Deal database : In 2007, Pragnya Fund had taken a 24.5% stake in L&T South City township project (L&T Eden Park) on Chennai's Old Mahabalipuram Road/IT corridor. Pragnya Fund has been in the real estate investment business in India and Sri Lanka since 2005-06. In addition to their Chennai projects, the Fund has also invested in an IT SEZ project at Kochi, a mixed-use project in Colombo, two residential projects at Asansol and Barrackpore in West Bengal and another project in Bangalore. The total built up space in these projects is around 12 million

TVS Shriram Growth Fund-I, managed by Chennai-based TVS Capital, has announced that it has completed its Rs.35 crore investment commitment (originally announced in Nov-09) in Facilities Management Service provider Dusters Total Solutions Services (DTSS), with a balance Rs.10 crore tranche. Formed by merging two companies run by Shamsher and Jasmer Puri, the Bangalore-based DTSS has offices in Mumbai and other cities across 10 states. Simultaneously, it was also announced that DTSS has acquired Facilitec Services, a Singapore- and Bangalore-based FMS provider specializing in the Service, Operations and Maintenance of Electrical and Mechanical Systems. Following the acquisition, KC Gupta, MD of Fascilitec Services will head the M&E vertical in DTSS.

Bangalore-based early stage VC fund Ojas Ventures has invested in RiverSilica Technologies, a company that provides a hardware-based solution for speeding up video streaming services. RiverSilica's solution accelerates video streaming in a device agnostic way for enhancing end user experience and lowering the cost of video delivery to content delivery networks (CDNs) and content owners. The company, which also has an office in Japan, is led by Jagannathan Balaji, who previously founded Purple Vision Technologies, a Bangalore-based company engaged in chip design services with a special focus on image processing. Puruple Vision, which had raised funding from CVC International, was acquired by TES Electronic solutions in 2005.

Economic Times has an interesting article on the emerging trends in the Indian Angel Investing space. “Without a doubt individual investing is a growing trend but individuals are few and scarce whereas with a network all that an entrepreneur has to do is apply online and gain access to a pool of nearly a hundred,” says Sasha Mirchandani, founder Mumbai Angels who was an individual investor before he set up the angel group. ...“Start-up entrepreneurs usually give up 30-40 % of equity to an angel network and by the time first round of venture capital funding comes round they could be left with just 20% of the ownership and lose motivation ,” says LR Narayanan, whose investment banking firm MasterKey Holdings works with early-stage technology firms. But beyond the money the real draw of individual angels is the personal mentoring they provide. “For this model to work angels must nurture just two or three start-ups at a time,” says Krishnappa, who is floating a model where individuals put

Partner Event Promotion: Following the success of our first two Emerging Market GP events in Shanghai, PRC (Sep 2007) and Goa, India (Apr 2009), we at Capvent invite select fund managers from China, India, Brazil and other Emerging Markets to attend our Summit, a 3 rd in the series. The Summit provides a unique platform for practitioners to develop their networks, forge new business relationships, and identify investment opportunities for their portfolio companies. It will also leverage Capvent’s insights and deep networks in the region, to bring together at one place the best minds in the business, to discuss, understand and explore these synergies through a professional network similar to their own. AGENDA OF THE SUMMIT 3 days of interesting deliberations by leading practitioners in Emerging Markets on the way forward for Private Equity, especially in the Emerging Markets. It will also include 2 nights of networking cocktails and dinner to develop networks and new business r

Vinculum Solutions Private Limited has received investment from Accel Partners India. The funding will help Vinculum to enhance its suite of products and to accelerate growth in India and itsglobal operations. Mr. Mahendran Balachandran, Partner,Accel India (Ex Country General Manager India, Apple) has joined the Board of Vinculum Solutions. About Vinculum Solutions Limited: Vinculum Solutions Limited is a focused company providing IT Products and Solutions to leading Retailers, Supply Chain/Logistics and Manufacturing/Distribution companies Vinculum’s product portfolio spans the retail value chain and comprises of fully owned products such as Vin MMS (Merchandising Solutions), Vin Store Solutions ( BOS, POS), Vin Commerce, Vin Procure, Vin MDM (Master Data Management). Vinculum services include a) helping customers develop a long term IT strategy covering Applications, processes , people and Infrastructure b) Application Development services c) Package Implementation, localization an

Economic Times has published a feature on the Moser Baer Group's foray into the power generation business. (The group recently raised PE funding from Blackstone for one of the ventures.) It’s as big a reinvention the Puris have undertaken as any. Over the next five years, the Puris plan to invest Rs 34,000 crore -- about 16 times the current revenues of Moser Baer India -- to set up 5,000 MW of power capacity across three mediums: thermal, hydro and solar. And they are doing all this outside the flagship company. ...For the Rs.34,000 crore investment required, the Puris are looking at a debt-equity ratio of 75:25. However, the banks they are talking to are asking for 30% equity, as Moser Baer is new to the power business. At 30%, the equity component is about Rs 10,000 crore. So far, it has got Rs 1,350 crore from Blackstone. The Puri family has brought in Rs 700-800 crore, most of it providentially realised from the sale of personal land just before Lehman Brothers collapsed, tak