The Venture Intelligence Blog

DEG – Deutsche Investitions - und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH has taken a minority stake in Deepak Fasteners Ltd., a leading manufacturer of high end specialty industrial fasteners. Deepak Fasteners owns the ‘Unbrako’ brand, which it acquired two years back from SPS Technologies of USA. Unbrako is an engineers’ preferred choice for all safety and mission critical applications. “We are very happy to partner with a world class Indian company with strong international brands. Deepak’s products support a wide range of high growth key infrastructure industries and we believe the company is in a good position to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the next round of growth in India and elsewhere. DEG’s investment would generate additional employment opportunities and would help the Indian Company establish itself as a global player. ”, said Amit Goyal, Investment Manager at DEG’s office in Delhi. Earlier this year, Deepak Fasteners raised first round of capital for its expansion proje

From the profile of India's largest publisher of English books, which releases over 250 titles a year. But it was in 2004 that Rupa really hit it big with Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone. The book rewrote the rules of the publishing industry in India. An English book was considered a bestseller if it sold 10,000 copies. Five Point Someone and each of the other books he wrote sold a million. Priced at Rs. 95, it negated the threat of piracy. How does Rupa do it? There are three key factors that help Rupa sell so many books. The first one is a very strong distribution chain. Mehra has a tie-up with A.H. Wheeler, the railway bookstore chain that has outlets across the length and breadth of India...Rupa has been growing at 50 percent for the last three years against an industry average of 30 percent. ...A key reason that Mehra is able to understand young India is because he is the same age as his readers...Authors get 10-15 percent royalty on sales of every book. If he feels that t

Partner Conference Promotion The Indian Private Investors Conference is a director level, interactive conference with speakers and panellists being industry leaders drawn from India and abroad. The speaker line up for this event boasts of some reputed and eminent professionals such as; Anubha Shrivastava, Managing Director - Asia, CDC Group Bharat Bakhshi, Partner, Jacob Ballas Capital India Pvt Ltd Gautam Mehra, Executive Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers Jasmin Patel, Managing Director, Fidelity Growth Partners - India Manish Chhajed, Vice President, Reliance PE Mritunjay Kapoor, Managing Director, Protiviti Nakul Zaveri, Senior Investment Officer, Climate Change Capital Pankaj Dutt, President, Welkin Partners Percy Billimoria, Sr Partner, AZB Partners Raj Pai, Managing Director, GEF Advisors India Rajesh Begur, Managing Partner, ARA Law Dr. Subir Gokarn, Deputy Governor, RBI* Samir Inamdar, Founding Partner, Forum Synergy PE Fund Sandeep Aneja, Managing Partner, Kaizen PE Fund Suneet

Corporate law firm AZB & Partners continues to top the Venture Intelligence India League Tables as the Most Active Legal Advisor for both Private Equity and M&A deals – advising a total of 69 transactions - in the first nine months of 2010. Ernst & Young topped the League Tables as the Most Active Transaction Advisor (both PE and M&A) for the nine months ended September 2010. The Venture Intelligence League Tables, the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on volume of PE and M&A transactions advised by Transaction and Legal Advisory firms. Private Equity Deals Among PE transactions, AZB advised 36 deals worth over $2 billion during the period including SBI-Macquarie’s $304 million investment in Viom Networks; the $300 million investment by Olympus Capital in Tata Power's coal mine SPVs in Indonesia and the $217 million investment by Standard Chartered PE, KKR and New Silk Route in

As part of its "Lunch with BS" series, Business Standard has an interview with Renuka Ramnath of Multiples Alternate Asset Management. ...ICICI Venture was also a trendsetter under Ramnath who invested in emerging sectors such as retail, biotech, media and aviation much ahead of others and pushed the firm from just venture funding to late-stage investing and even buyouts. She was also credited with creating a highly-successful structured finance portfolio that, within two years of its existence, contributed more than 40 per cent of ICICI’s incremental assets. ..Ramnath says Multiples will be sector-agnostic and make investments in Indian companies, management-led buyouts and spin-offs of divisions from large Indian groups — something she did at ICICI Ventures with great success. ...Her expectations about her own skills have, however, toned down a bit. At ICICI Ventures, she was known to give her investors outsized returns — the India Advantage Fund realised an internal rate

During the nine months ended September 2010, Indian companies were involved in a total of 474 M&A deals, up 72% from the same period in 2009, according to a study by Venture Intelligence (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A transaction activity in India. The median deal value during the first nine months of 2010 (for the 206 deals which had announced transaction values) at $16 million was however down from the median deal value of $20 million for the same period in 2009, the Venture Intelligence study found. In the largest deal during the period, Reliance Natural Resources agreed to merge with Reliance Power in a deal valued at $11 billion. This was followed by Bharti Airtel’s $10.7 billion acquisition of Kuwaiti-based Zain's African assets; Vedanta Resources’ $8.5 billion bid to acquire oil & gas firm Cairn India and Mundra Port’s $5.48 billion amalgamation with Adani Enterprises. About 30% of the deals in the nine

Private Equity firms invested about US$2,047 million across 88 deals during the quarter ended September 2010, according to a study by Venture Intelligence (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A transaction activity in India. The latest numbers take the total PE investments in 2010 to $6,566 million (across 231 deals) more than twice the $2,502 million invested (across 179 deals) during the same period in 2009. (Note: These numbers do not include PE investments in Real Estate.) The amount invested in Q3 ’10 was little over twice that during the same period last year (which witnessed $976 million being invested across 65 deals), but lower compared to the immediate previous quarter ($2,364 million across 71 deals). “For the first time since Q1’09, the amount invested by PE firms has dipped when compared to the immediate previous quarter,” noted Mr. Arun Natarajan, MD & CEO of Venture Intelligence. “Given the rapidly rising public

For Sequoia Capital India, its 2007 investment in SKS Microfinance, founded by former McKinsey consultant Vikram Akula, was one of its first outside the technology sector. With SKS’ successful August 2010 listing, Sequoia, which had invested $32 million in the company over three years, is now sitting on returns of about 13x (at the mid-September market price). Extracts from an interview with Sumir Chadha, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India , , who represents the firm on the SKS board, on the path-breaking investment. This interview was first published in the latest quarterly Venture Intelligence India Roundup Private Equity report . Venture Intelligence: Tell us how the original investment by Sequoia in SKS come about. Sumir Chadha: In early 2006, we identified the microfinance sector as an area of interest, and proactively reached out to the top players in the sector. At the time, people forget, but SKS Microfinance was the third largest player in the industry. However