The Venture Intelligence Blog

From the Press Release: ET NOW’s Super Angels, a special series on the ‘Starting Up’ show which provides a platform for start-ups to make pitches to Angel Investors, witnessed a Mumbai based start-up company – Fetise.com (Men’s Apparel e-commerce platform) raise capital up to Rs. 25 Crores from Seedfund, represented by Mahesh Murthy, one of the Super Angels on the show. On what attracted Seedfund to invest in Fetise.com, Mahesh Murthy, Managing Partner of Seedfund says, “Very often we see e-commerce start-ups who want to sell everything to everybody. But here we found a team that focussed on one target audience: upscale men and they’ve executed well to build a wide and deep line of products for the audience, as well as significantly differentiate from other e-com players.” On the experience of raising funds on the Super Angels platform, Chetan Bafna of Fetise.com says “The sheer pace of growth within e-commerce in India makes this an exciting business. Our fundraising process started 6...

Edited Extracts from the Press Release: ScaleArc , a Mumbai and Silicon Valley-based database infrastructure software maker founded by Varun Singh, former CTO of Web18, has secured a $5.33 million second round of financing. The round was led by Trinity Ventures with participation from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. The new funds will accelerate geographic and staffing expansion to meet increased demand. In addition, ScaleArc announced the appointment of Justin Barney, who previously ran sales divisions at companies like Citrix and Juniper Networks, as president and COO. ScaleArc’s iDB software, which is available for MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and Postgres database environments, offers real-time query analytics and control, instant horizontal scaling, caching, dynamic load balancing and more, all without any changes to existing applications or databases. ScaleArc customers include e-commerce, SaaS, online gaming and digital media companies. With exponentially growing data a...

From the Press Release: Accel Partners has completed Series A investment in Trivone Digital a Bangalore-based new age digital media and content company. The funds will be utilised by Trivone towards meeting its working capital requirements as well as pushing growth through the inorganic route in the months ahead. “We are delighted to have Accel Partners on board and look forward to working closely with them as we chart out a growth path for ourselves. We believe that the expertise gathered by Accel Partners over 25 years of building more than 300 successful enterprises will hold us in good stead,” said Subu Subramanyan, Founder and CEO of Trivone Digital Services. Trivone’s strategy is the ability to create world class content, which will enable it to build Digital media properties and offer managed services to clients. Currently the company offers services by way of creating, sourcing and packaging content for online delivery to a wide cross-section of large Enterprise customers. “Tri...

Extract from the Business Today article : There is quite a crowd on the kids' wear bandwagon, and segmentation has stretched in the past year to include luxury. While Big Bazaar is among those that cater to the mass segment, Gini & Jony and Lilliput operate in the medium category. Homegrown brand Lilliput Kidswear, which started in 2003, has the early mover advantage, with 261 exclusive outlets and 541 shop-inshops in the country. ...The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry estimates that the industry is worth Rs 38,000 crore, and growing at a compound annual rate of about 20 per cent to reach Rs 80,000 crore by 2015. Kidology's same-store sales - a retail industry metric to distinguish a rise in sales within a store from an overall increase in sales due to the opening of new stores - have grown more than 40 per cent in the past year. Besides its own stores in Delhi and Mumbai, Kidology also sells through other retail outlets in Mumbai and Hyderabad. It is in talks ...

Cross-posting from the Venture Intelligence Entrevista series: Lessons from the Startup to Scale-up to Successful Sale of iMetrex Technologies, a building technologies and security venture catering to the Indian enterprise market - The Venture Intelligence Team Rajeev Mecheri, Managing Director, Mecheri Smart Capital ( Bio & LinkedIn ) Interview by Hari Krishnan of Venture Intelligence, followed by interaction with students at the Department of Management Studies IIT-Madras on November 9, 2011. Highlights: Please click on the links below to view corresponding video snippets: Importance of Customer Touch Point “What works for the company, works for you (the founder)” Founders should separate their lifestyle needs from that of the business Invest Appropriately - in infrastructure, etc. Decision to exit and the "strength of a brand" Decision to integrate vertically (getting into manufacturing) Following the Customers Innovative holding structure for acquiring a product co...

In an interview published in The Mint (in text and video formats), Vikram Utamsingh, Partner - Transactions and Restructuring & Private Equity Advisory, KPMG India, says that while the exit track record of India-dedicated PE funds has not been great in the last few years, things are likely to improve from here. ...results are going to be bad for a couple of years because the industry is holding on to a portfolio of investments and we can assume that at least one-third of them will not make returns. So what are investors going to do with these investments? Ultimately, investors will have to exit them, write them off, or something. I think the industry will continue to see some bad news, for a couple of years. Hopefully, the next 12 months are going to be a very good period for PE investments. To begin with, we have a stock market which is not very vibrant. So, there are a lot of IPOs that are not happening. These companies are now coming to PE firms to raise money. Those firms are ...

From the article in Forbes by Journalist Rebecca Fannin. India’s entrepreneurial journey is at least five years behind China’s path. There’s no Jack Ma or Robin Li in sight or a big-time IPO like Youku. India lacks the entrepreneurial buzz and fast pace of China tech clusters. Indian entrepreneurship has been led by grassroots efforts, and the government hasn’t always been venture friendly. If India is ever to break through, it needs to ditch an image as just for outsourcing or low-cost engineering and business services—a major challenge for the world leader of the booming $500 billion global outsourcing market. But India could eventually become a tech minipower and grab some of the limelight from China. Contemporary corporate centers such as Whitefield on the outskirts of Bangalore and the Gurgaon satellite city in Delhi showcase that India is rising. For sure, India needs a lot more deals with the stature of online travel site MakeMyTrip, a deal that barely gets noticed next to Chin...

Forbes has a video interview with BVP Partner Rob Chandra in which he talks about Internet and e-commerce company valuations. He also talks about the impact created by Internet companies including Chennai, India-based Bharatmatrimony.com in which BVP invested recently. Click Here for the accompanying Forbes article. Venture Intelligence is 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.

Startupcentral has an interview with Alok Mittal of Canaan Partners on the $45 million first round funding led by his firm for Wipro veteran and Mindtree Co-founder Ashok Soota's new IT Services venture. What do you find interesting about the business model? The business model draw for us (Canaan) was the outsourcing play. We already have a couple of portfolio companies (iYogi and UnitedLex) in that area. As far as the software services sector is concerned, in the past, significant shifts in information technology spends have created space for new companies. There is a shift taking place now in terms of enterprises in the US and Europe adopting cloud and mobility-based solutions. We think Happiest Minds has the potential to grab a large slice of this market. Will they work closely with some of your India and global portfolio companies which are in the same area? Absolutely. In fact, the founders have been very diligent about walking through both our and Intel Capital’s portfolio c...

From the Press Release: Aditya Birla Capital Advisors (ABCAP), the private equity arm of the Aditya Birla Financial Services Group (ABFSG), today announced an investment of Rs. 95 Crores from Aditya Birla Private Equity – Fund I in Alphion India Private Limited (AIPL). AIPL is the principal subsidiary of Princeton, USA based Alphion Corporation (Alphion). Alphion develops, manufactures and globally provides optical Fiber-To-The-Premises (FTTx) access systems, subsystems and integrated photonic devices. Their access systems offer optical networking solutions for the rapidly emerging FTTx market and the portfolio includes a full range of products for central office, outside plant, customer premise and network management. Alphion is a full member of the ITU FSAN group and a leader in developing key technologies for the next generation of passive optical networks. Alphion is the pioneer in developing all optical PON (passive optical network) network extension solutions to extend the reach ...

Edited excerpts from the press release: Ventureast Life Fund, an early growth and growth stage fund focused on the food and agriculture, clean environment and healthcare delivery sectors, has invested Rs.25 crores in VKS Farms , a Coimbatore-based, integrated meat processing company. Shekhar Kundur, General Partner of Ventureast, joins the Board of VKS Farms. The funding will be utilized for completing VKS's back-end operations, and expanding its retailing capability. VKS's differentiation stems from its diverse product mix of chicken, egg, meat and salt; integrated poultry supply-chain, spanning 'grandparents' to commercial birds facilities to processing to retailing; exports to over 30 countries, besides domestic presence; and state-of-the-art processing plant built to international standards. Shekhar Kundur said, “Hygienic meat retailing is the way forward in this unorganized market. With a comprehensive and efficient supply chain in place, we expect VKS Farms t...

An extract from The Economic Times profile ... His business model is simple: Veggibazaar.com takes orders online and delivers the very next day. This not only ensures freshness of the products—an essential feature of the company—but also means that he does not have to worry about bulk storage space and associated facilities, which is a huge saving. ... Since its launch, Venkatesan has pumped another Rs 1.2 crore into the company, of which Rs 60 lakh came from the couple's saving, Rs 40 lakh was raised by diluting the shares through a CA firm, while the balance was borrowed from family and friends. Venkatesan's effort is beginning to pay off. The company broke even in March this year, and has been yielding monthly revenues of about Rs 11 lakh ever since. Venkatesan says that he is now looking at the franchisee model for further expansion, both within Chennai and outside, starting with cities such as Bangalore,Trichy and Coimbatore. Venture Intelligence is the leading ...

Extract from The Economic Times profile of the mobile advertising company made famous by the recent $200 million investment that it attracted from SoftBank: On Raising Funds From Ram Shriram . There was a phase when credit cards of the entire founding team were used to just pay salaries! With little success in raising funds from sceptic Indian investors, I decided to take a flight to Silicon Valley, where our venture received positive response. Everyone believed in the power of the mobile internet. I was introduced to Ram Shriram and I was really looking at it as a once in a lifetime experience more than anything else. About 20 minutes into the presentation, Ram suddenly got up and said “Close the presentation, we are funding this. What is the execution plan?” I was in a state of shock not only because of his reaction but also because there was no execution plan to show him at that stage whatsoever. On InMobi's International Expansion. As we evaluated the market, we soo...

From The Economic Times profile Shanghvi has a conservative approach to doing business,with eyes firmly focused on cost and the bottom line. As bullish peers made ill-timed and expensive (in hindsight) acquisitions in western markets in the past decade, Shanghvi steered clear of bidding wars and oneupmanship. Instead he chose to buy distressed assets on the cheap with a view to turning them around. Taro,a financially mismanaged company whose shares were in the doldrums when Sun offered to buy control, is one such asset. Shanghvis perception of value is free of external stress factors, says the former CEO of a generics company. In nearly every major strategic decision it has made,Sun has parted ways with conventional wisdom. In the 1980s,while Indian companies were hawking antibiotics and other short-term treatments to general physicians, Shanghvi saw an opportunity in selling meds for chronic diseases to specialists such as psychiatrists and cardiologists. India has since ...

Cross-posting from the Venture Intelligence Entrevista series: Interaction with Raju Venkatraman, Founder & CEO, MEDALL Diagnostics Interview by Chandu Nair, Founder of Scope eKnowledge, followed by interaction with students and other entrepreneurs at the Department of Management Studies IIT-Madras on October 24, 2011. Highlights: The ability to "zoom in and zoom out" - As an entrepreneur, whenever the situation warrants it, you should be able to work in a hands on fashion and get involved in the details. Similarly, you should also be able to step back and focus on the bigger picture (and leave the details to others). Please click on the links below to view corresponding video snippets The motivation as an entrepreneur is not in "being the boss" - It's more about "getting to scale" (and hence the impact you can make) "There is no such thing as a right decision. You should make a decision and then make it right." The Esse...

Smart CEO has profile on this company which focuses on making youth from Tier II and III cities more employment ready. After three years of research, the Graduate Certificate in Corporate Readiness (GCCR) is a copyrighted program from TalentBridge to help students from smaller towns prepare for interviews and a corporate career. ...The company conducted an online survey, which showed that 77 per cent of the time corporates are looking for the right attitude in students, 13 per cent for communication skills, six per cent on subject knowledge and four per cent on other specific needs. The first typical question hiring managers ask candidates is, “Tell me about yourself.” ...The company has seven full time trainers and 50 empanelled trainers. They are all trained under a ‘Train the Trainer’ program, which is based on a video content TalentBridge has developed and used as a framework. In 2010-11, about 1,500 students were trained and its current year target is 5,300, which Shukla is confi...

NPR's Planet Money has a very interesting podcast with Satyajit Das, a finance professional-turned-author, where he talks about the imbalances created by finance (and financial engineering) driving businesses, rather than the other way round. He provides a very graphic example from his career at an airline firm - which began to make more money by making bets on the price of oil than from transporting people (and hence became more of a Financial Institution than an airline). Das also talks about how finance getting into the driver's seat has led to too many bright young minds getting into this area (because the money is better, etc.) and how, one of the benefits of the great credit crunch of 2008/09, is taking some fizz out of finance. You can listed to the podcast from here Here is the Amazon.com link to the new book ("Extreme Money") by Das on this topic and more. Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital a...

US-headquartered Private Equity firm Blackstone stepped on the gas on its India investments, committing to invest over half a billion dollars in just the three months ended September 2011, according to the Venture Intelligence quarterly Private Equity Roundup Reports . Overall, Private Equity firms invested about $2,249 million across 98 deals during the quarter (not including Real Estate investments). Three of Blackstone's investments during the period were targeted at companies involved in Power Projects: SKS Chhattisgarh Power Generation ($261-M via the Blackstone owned Sithe Global Power); Visa Power ($111-M) and Monnet Ispat & Power ($29-M in the listed group company of Monnet Power - in which it had invested $60-M last year). Blackstone was also involved in the largest real estate sector investment announced during Q3’11: a reported $200 million investment in Bangalore’s Manyata Embassy Business Park. The firm also wrote a small cheque (by its standards) - of about $33 mi...

Venture Capital firms invested $217 million over 43 deals in India during the three months ending September 2011, according to a study by Venture Intelligence (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a research service focused on Private Equity, Venture Capital and M&A transaction activity in India. These figures take the total VC investments in 2011 to $752 million across 136 transactions (compared to $504 million across 97 deals in the first nine months of 2010 and $707 million across 132 transactions during the entire year). The amount invested during Q3’11 was flat compared to the same quarter in 2010 (which had witnessed $212 million being invested across 42 deals) and significantly lower compared to the immediate previous quarter ($325 million across 56 deals), the Venture Intelligence study showed. Information Technology and IT-Enabled Services (IT & ITES) companies attracted the most investments at 21 deals worth about $89 million, followed by Energy and Financial Services ...

From the Press Release: GENWI (http://genwi.com), the leader in cloud publishing platforms for Tablets and Smartphones, has raised $4 million in Series A funding in a round led by Nexus Venture Partners (http://nexusvp.com). GENWI’s existing investors,Inventus Capital Partners and Quest Venture Partners, also participated in the round, bringing GENWI’s lifetime funding to $5.1 million including their original $1.1 million seed round raised in 2010. Offering one of the easiest and yet extremely powerful cloud-based platforms for publishing content on Tablets and Smartphones, GENWI has created and is actively managing over 1,500 apps for thousands of publishers. As opposed to custom building apps for each deviceform factor, GENWI affords publishers the ability to publish once and deliver interactive apps across all smart mobile devices - including iOS, Android, and HTML5. The GENWI Cloud Publishing Suite offers a mobile optimized, content aggregation and management system,a custom interf...

PE Investments in first 9 months of 2011 surpasses entire of 2010 as deal sizes grow significantly Private Equity firms invested about $2,249 million across 98 deals during the quarter ended September 2011, according to a study by Venture Intelligence (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A transaction activity in the country. The latest figures take the total PE investments in the first nine months of 2011 to about $8,570 million (across 317 transactions) – significantly higher compared to the about $6,400 million (across 270 transactions) in the same period last year. Also, the value of PE investments year-to-date in 2011 has already surpassed the $8,256 million invested (across 358 transactions) in the entire of 2010, the Venture Intelligence study showed. (Note: These figures exclude PE investments in Real Estate.) The PE investment amount during Q3’11 was lower than that during the same period last year (which witnessed $2,357 ...

Extract from an article by Haigreve Khaitan of corporate law firm Khaitan & Co. in The Economic Times. Promoters may be able to assess investors' intentions from the manner of their treatment of anti-dilution rights that keep the investors' holding at a pre-agreed level. For example, if an investor holds 100 shares issued at Rs.100 per share, and the company makes a fresh round at Rs.50 per share, the investor with full anti-dilution protection would be entitled to a further 100 shares at no additional cost. If investors do not participate at the lower-price rights issue,it may indicate that they do not have a long-term plan with your company. Promoters could negotiate provisions where the investor loses its anti-dilution protection in such circumstances. Private Equity investors negotiate expensive affirmative rights and minority protection,via board control rights often not fully used when the company's business and finances are positive. Understand comple...

Edited excerpts from the Press Release: NYSE-listed Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, has agreed to acquire privately held Gluster, Inc, a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for standardizing the management of unstructured data , for approximately $136 million in cash. As part of the transaction, Red Hat will also assume unvested Gluster equity outstanding on the closing date and issue certain equity retention incentives. The transaction is expected to close in October, subject to customary closing conditions. With this acquisition, Red Hat will define a new baseline for how enterprise IT manages the explosion of big data, whether deployed on-premise or spanning into the public cloud. Red Hat is expanding into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, enabling it to deliver open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing. Founded in 2005, Gl...

Extract from an Economic Times article by Manish Kanchan, Managing Director of SAGE Capital. Very often we see entrepreneurs consulting with well wishers, old-time chartered accountants or their loyal CFOs during the deal-making process. Usually this is the first time anybody is dealing with private equity transactions and are therefore completely out of their depths. Sometimes, they are also insecure about their own future position in the company. ...Investment bankers are your allies. Choose them based on their track record of having closed similar transactions Ask for references and speak with them. Do not appoint them based on the valuation they promise you. Investment bankers do not sign the cheque. Once appointed, trust them and encourage them to provide you with honest feedback directly. The same applies for lawyers as well. ...The business plan must be realistic with a slight optimistic bias. It should also be linked to past performance. If the business has grown at 15% over l...

Extract from The Economic Times profile of Carat-Lane Online jewellery retail portal Carat-Lane aims to bypass the hiccups that have laid low a number of e-commerce players, by adopting a two-pronged strategy – building its own delivery network even as it increases the geographical footprint. ... Sacheti, who co-founded the company with Srinivas Gopalan in 2008, expects to service more than 100 cities in India by the end of the current financial year. The company expects to post revenue of . 100 crore for financial year 2011-12, a 50% rise from the previous fiscal's top-line numbers.CaratLane, which specialises in the sale of solitaires and diamonds, is now considering entering different product categories such as watches, to diversify its range, but only in a phased manner. "We have sold more than 3,000 solitaires in 2010, which has led us to believe that sustainability of jewellery is much better than product categories of lower value," Sacheti said. The margins are be...

Edited excerpts from the Press Release: Franklin Templeton Private Equity Strategy, a private equity portfolio advised by Darby Asia Investors (India) Limited, has invested Rs 45 crore in Symbiotec Pharmalab Limited. Symbiotec is engaged in research, development, manufacturing and marketing of research based Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (“API”s) for corticosteroids and hormones. It has an extensive product portfolio of over 40 corticosteroids and hormones APIs and supplies its products to leading pharmaceutical companies in India and overseas including marquee names such GSK Pharmaceuticals, Teva, Ranbaxy and Cipla. The funds raised from FTPES will be applied towards backward integration by setting up fermentation facilities which is expected to improve the Company’s competitive positioning and profitability. This also is expected to help the Company to attract customers from highly regulated markets such as US, Europe and Japan. Systematix Capital Services Pvt. Ltd was the exclu...

Economic Times has a profile of the entrepreneurial story of Bangalore-based "Customer Experience Management" Software firm CustomerXPs. Though the team was in place, it took us over a year to develop the first sample. By January 2008, we started taking feedback from prospective clients and realised that the product was becoming very complex. That's when we started interacting with Sharad Hegde, former Infosys chief technology officer, for his advice on simplifying the product. By mid-2008, he joined our firm as a consultant and also became an angel investor for CustomerXPs. He has invested about $1 million (Rs 4.6 crore) in the company. Our deadline for earning the first revenue was August 2009, but we missed it because we couldn't close a deal. However, the silver lining was that we were upgrading our product, which was an ongoing process. Despite realising that selling software products is difficult in India — many such companies have been forced to change to soft...

This post is for the benefit of (and comments from) fellow paid content publishers. Constant Contact, a web-based email newsletter/marketing service that we at Venture Intelligence have been using to send out our paid for Deal Digest Daily newsletters sent us the following message - out of the blue - yesterday: Response (Kristen D) Dear Arun, I am sorry to report that your account, login name: "entureintelligence" (sic) , has been flagged for uploading several industry spamtraps along with a host of problematic addresses. As a result, we will no longer be able to provide Constant Contact services to you. The marketplace associated with sending email has changed dramatically, and as a result, we have had to adapt our complaint tolerances and list management inspections to meet the current business environment. While we appreciate your consideration, we can not afford the risk and exposure associated with your account. High abuse complaints result in getting our servers blocke...

Business Standard has an article on Indiagames' future under Walt Disney (which is in the process of taking over Indiagames' current parent, UTV) Today, Indiagames works with original equipment manufacturers (OEM) as well as telcos like Tata Docomo, Uninor, and Idea. Large accounts like Airtel and Vodafone have grown 24 per cent year-on-year in FY2011. App stores have also fuelled the firm’s growth. T20 fever developed by Indiagames was among the top 10 games in Apple’s App Store. Indiagames is perhaps the only company that has been successful in creating a business model for games via subscription. A Games on Demand (GoD) model was initiated for PC-gamersand has 80,000 users in 2011 from 30,000 in 2010 and is a solid contributor, generating Rs 8.2 crore of revenue in FY201, up from Rs 2.3 crore in FY2010. A user can download and play unlimited times, up to 300 PC games which are digitally delivered for a monthly subscription of Rs 200 and Rs 100 . It has also entered into th...

From the Press Release: Starting Up, ET NOW’s show on India's start-up ecosystem, with an objective to promote and generate awareness on entrepreneurship & entrepreneurial skills in India; visits the MIT School of Business to conduct a one day special workshop titled 'Starting Up @ MIT'. The entire session will be recorded by the MIT Team & the videos will then be uploaded onto their online platform & become a part of the new entrepreneurship syllabus at MIT. Prominent entrepreneurs like Samir Palnitkar, Founder of Shop Socially.com; Anup Tapadia, Founder of Touchmagix; Abinash Tripathy, Former Indian Head of Zimbra and now Founder of Infinitely Beta will be the main speakers at the workshop along with Sudhir Syal, Anchor & Editor of the show ‘Starting Up’. The various topics covered during the workshop will include - How to write a business plan, the essence of starting up, evaluating start-up ideas, secret to scaling a business and the art of product inn...

From the press release: Taurus Flexibles have announced their strategic association with Spain based Cikautxo s. Coop and Mondragon S. Coop to augment the manufacturing of rubber and plastic hoses for the automotive segment for international and domestic markets. This tie-up is being achieved by the acquisition of 50% stake in Taurus’ wholly owned EOU subsidiary in Pune created from the transfer of assets from the parent group. The joint venture company is called Cikautxo Taurus Flexibles Private Ltd. and has an estimated networth of Rs. 34 crores. Taurus Flexibles is a Rs. 200 crores reputed domestic manufacturer of automotive tubes and hoses with an impressive track record, while with € 220 million turnover, Cikautxo s. Coop of Spain designs and manufactures parts and assemblies for diverse applications for the automotive industry. The company holds the repute of proving service to leading automobile companies in the world. Commenting about the deal, Rishi Kshettry, CEO, Cikautxo T...

From the cover story profiling 7 leading VC firms: Helion Ventures, Nexus Ventures, IndoUS Ventures, IDG Ventures India, Accel India, Inventus Capital and Canaan Partners. During 2004-10, venture capitalists invested $3.96 billion in Indian startups. Another $621 million has been invested this year, according to Chennai-based research firm Venture Intelligence. There is an established line of VC firms who have consistently invested through this period. Some are local arms of Silicon Valley firms such as Norwest Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Others, such as Helion Venture Partners and Inventus Capital Partners, are independent startups themselves. By 2015, total investments will touch $10 billion, projects Bangalore-based VC firm IDG Ventures India. ...The numbers underline a few important facts about the Indian startup economy. First, there is enough innovation at the startup level to encourage risk capital to make bets over a sustained period. Second, if VC investment...

Extracts from the interview appearing in the latest issue of the Indian Angel Network's newsletter: As far as E-Commerce is concerned, it is becoming a big money game and you will see companies either succeed massively or blow up in style. What is somewhat worrisome is the tendency of some E-Commerce companies to scale up sales even if they are negative margin, the more you sell the more you lose. Investors also need to ask probing questions about revenue recognition practices. There are some smoke and mirrors out there. I expect sanity to return to this space sometime in the next two years. Excessive valuations will be corrected. The smoke will clear and dodgy accounting practices will be recognised for what they are. People will not be selling below variable cost anymore. ...For the most part people are starting off aping successful businesses in the West. You can’t blame the entrepreneurs alone for this, since these are also the models for which funding comes easier because the...

From the Press Release: ‘Super Angels’ , the ongoing series on ET NOW’s Starting Up – the home for start-ups on Indian television, has successfully completed 14 episodes.14 start-ups have pitched in their business plans to 4 of India’s most influential investors, competing for a spot in the grand finale where the winner gets an opportunity to raise funds between Rs.50 Lakhs & Rs. 2 Crores live on the show. Speaking about the show and its format, Harshal Shah, Founder and Managing Director of Reliance Ventures said this “The format of the show is very hands-on, impromptu, and educational. It is also informative to entrepreneurs as the process of a formal or informal education in the VC space is not something that most Indian business schools are able to expose their students”. Vishal Gondal, Founder of Indiagames said that the key difference with the show was with its format, “The format is spread over 6 months rather than the 1-2 months other shows have aired for. The 6 mo...

Schneider Electric's June 2011 acquisition of a 74% stake in Luminous Power Technologies, the New Delhi-based provider of inverters, UPS and power storage systems, was the French electrical products maker's sixth Indian acquisition in the last 3 years. Schneider's aggressive moves in the Indian market is part of a general rise in inbound acquisitions by European companies. While US-based companies continued to be the most keen acquirer of Indian companies during the first 6 months 2011 accounting for 18 of transactions (followed by Japanese companies which acquired 7), H1’11 witnessed 18 Europe-headquartered companies (including 4 from UK, 4 from Germany and 3 from France) shopping for Indian targets . Data Source: Venture Intelligence M&A Deal Database and Venture Intelligence India M&A Report

The following is a note on the SEBI - Alternative Investment Fund Regulation 2011 (AIF) prepared by A V Seshadrinathan ("Sesh"), MD of leading fund accounting KPO Basiz . An Accounting and Tax perspective The proposed AIF regulation has clearly demonstrated, that High networth Individuals and Qualified investors in the country are sizeable, have the knowledge to take on risks and are well informed, when investing into alternative investments. The alternative asset class itself, has been recognized as an mainstream investment for certain investors. The regulation at its highest level, seeks to prevent retail investors from straying or being induced to this asset class. Further the regulation also classifies Investment strategies based on objectives of the investment. Therefore, while the regulation caters to monitoring & regulating the liability side of the fund, it also ensures that monies are invested into assets or securities that match the philosophy & str...