The Venture Intelligence Blog

From the article in Businessworld: The young and the restless view it as a “cool” place to hang out. Poovili Manan, a commerce graduate from Chennai, says it “allows us to experience different brands (of foods) each time”. You can take your pick of the fare on offer — Chinese, Italian, south or north Indian or blends such as Arabic and Continental. Or hang out at “brands” — McDonald’s, or a KFC. There is something out here for the silver-haired, too. For them, it is less about food brand, and more about a sense of the community. Now to the food court math. “The revenue from food courts in our malls is commensurate with the area it has as a percentage of the overall mall. That is about 8-10 per cent of the overall leasable area. And revenues are the same in terms of contribution,” says Arindam Kunar, mall head and vice-president, DLF Place Saket in Delhi. The national capital is an exception — food courts generate nearly 15 per cent of a mall’s revenues due to extremes of weather. Many...

From the Businessworld article : The first to launch was Zee Khana Khazana about six weeks ago on the company’s DTH platform Dish TV. In a launch interview, business head of Zee Khana Khazana, Anurag Bedi, underlined the importance of food to the Indian viewer, calling it “one of the three non-communal religions after Bollywood and cricket”. The 24-hour food channel has on offer both Indian culinary programmes like A Touch of Turmeric as well as taking housewives through recipes with chefs on the international circuit like the Chinese food show Ching’s Kitchen. For content-producing company Alva Brothers, a food channel became a matter of necessity. The company’s foray into broadcasting with a Hindi entertainment channel, Real, came a cropper last year. Shutting it down, the group has morphed its broadcasting plans into a slew of lifestyle channels. The first offering from the Real Lifestyle Network will be ‘Food First’, expected to be on air in the next couple of weeks. Says Manisha T...

Corporate law firm AZB & Partners has topped the Venture Intelligence India League Tables for 2010 as the Most Active Legal Advisor for both Private Equity and M&A deals. AZB advised a total of 90 transactions during the period. Ernst & Young – which advised a total of 34 qualifying transactions - topped the League Tables as the Most Active Transaction Advisor (both PE and M&A) for the year. 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 43 deals worth over $2.2 billion during 2010 including SBI-Macquarie’s $304 million investment in Viom Networks; the $217 million investment by Standard Chartered PE, KKR and New Silk Route in Coffee Day Resorts; and the $175 million investment by Temasek into National Stock Exchange. Other legal ad...

Group buying, local search engines and education are the new mantras of success on the Web, says a Businessworld article . Group buying sites offer deals at heavy discounts, getting mass volume for them. Though it is new to India, group buying has been growing in the US for some time. For instance, US website GroupOn started by offering 50-90 per cent discount. Some of the prominent group-buying websites in India are Mydala, Koovs, Snapdeal and Dealsforyou. For Mydala, discounts go up to 70 per cent. For instance, one merchant gave a 93 per cent discount for a tattoo. Undoubtedly, a great deal for the customers, but what does the merchant gain? Simple. He gets hundreds of customers in a matter of days. Verticals that have picked up a lot of traction are highly popular among the younger generation. Think restaurants, salons and recreation such as weekend getaways. “One weekend, we had a cruise package as a deal and it sold so much that we had to do multiple cruise bookings,” says Kunal ...

From the Businessworld article : Another dotcom entrepreneur who decided to stick it out is Dinesh Agarwal, founder of Indiamart.com, a venture started in 1996. Though the firm posted revenues of only Rs 90 crore in 2009-10, its valuation is around Rs 600 crore. Indiamart is a business-to-business (B2B) portal focusing solely on the SME (small and medium enterprises) sector. Over the years, it has built a huge portfolio of customers. In 2001, it had 50,000 firms on the site selling products and by 2004, this number rose to 300,000. What Agarwal did was to build an ecosystem. Even today, 97 per cent of products and firms on the site are unpaid. But space priority is given to paid vendors — the upper half of the page is for them. As Agarwal adds more categories to the existing 40,000 and the number of products and companies are increased, the ratio between paid and unpaid vendors might change. Paid vendors may increase to 8-10 per cent. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture ...

Businessworld has a feature on the generational changes among business families in the Indian Real Estate business. 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

We are delighted to announce a stellar list of speakers for APEX '11, the annual conclave of the Indian Private Equity / Venture Capital industry, scheduled for February 9-10 at Mumbai. Apex'11 Awards (evening of Feb.9) Special Guest: Gurcharan Das, Noted Author and Former-CEO of P&G India P.R. Srinivasan, CEO, Exponentia Capital A.K.Purwar, Chairman, IndiaVenture Vinod Dham, Managing Director, IndoUS Ventures Paresh Vaish, Managing Director, Alvarez & Marsal India Apex'11 Summit (Day long on Feb.10) Private Equity: The Road Ahead Raja Kumar, Founder & CEO, Ascent Capital Alok Gupta, Managing Director - India, Headland Capital K Srinivas, Managing Partner, BTS India* Al Lakhani, Managing Director, Alvarez & Marsal India Vishal Gandhi, Partner, Gandhi & Associates Anu Parthasarathy, CEO, Global Executive Talent Cleantech Panel Dr. Vivek Tandon, Co-Founder, Aloe Private Equity Inderpreet Wadhwa, CEO, Azure Power Vinod Kala, Managing Director, Emergent Ven...

Highlights from the Venture Intelligence Indian 2010 Annual Private Equity Roundup Report Private Equity firms invested $7,974 million over 325 deals in India during the 12 months ending December 2010, compared to $4,068 million across 290 deals during the previous year, according to analysis by Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A activity. (These figures include VC investments and exclude PE investments in Real Estate.) “After a volatile 3 year period, PE investment activity in 2010 reverts to the levels of 2006 (which had witnessed 358 investments worth $7,485 million),” pointed out Arun Natarajan, CEO of Venture Intelligence. “The really exciting feature of 2010 was on the exits side where activity vaulted to all time high levels with 121 transactions, including 24 via IPOs,” he added. Top Investments The largest investment reported during the year was the $425 million raised by power generation firm Asian Genco from investors including Ge...

Raja Kumar, Founder & CEO of Ascent Capital The growth capital focused PE firm Ascent Capital, recently invested Rs.150 crore in Hyderabad-based IVRCL Assets & Holdings. Earlier in 2010, Ascent had co-invested (with Argonaut and IDFC) into the energy arm of the GMR Group. Venture Intelligence spoke to Raja Kumar, Founder & CEO of Ascent Capital , about the latest investments and other developments at the Bangalore-headquartered firm. Venture Intelligence: Can you tell us how the IVRCL Assets investment came about and what attracted you to the company? Raja Kumar: Our internal research flagged water and road infrastructure assets as an attractive area to invest in during the fund life of our current fund. With the streamlining of regulations and good visibility of the upcoming road pipeline, the road segment is poised to grow. Water infrastructure is another promising area given the demographics of India. We dug deeper into these sectors and identified players whom we belie...

Edited extracts from the Press Release: Agra-based EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) and infrastructure development company PNC Infratech Limited (PNC) has received Rs.150 crores as an equity investment from NYLIM Jacob Ballas India Fund III, LLC (“NYLIM-JB Fund”), a Mauritius based Private Equity investor. PNC specializes in construction of highways, bridges, flyovers and airport runways, having built more than 1,000 km of highways and executed 17 airport runway projects till date . Commenting on the deal Mr. Pradeep Kumar Jain, Chairman and Managing Director of PNC said “The infusion of funds will help the company strengthen its balance sheet further, enabling it to bid for larger projects. PNC will use the funds to meet its capital expenditure and working capital requirements as also to part finance the equity contribution for its BOT projects to be developed in separate SPVs.” Mr. Sunil Chawla, Partner, Jacob Ballas Capital India Pvt Ltd (“JBC”), investment advisor ...

Paresh Thakker, Head-Group M&A and MD-Global Asset Management, Religare In 2010, the Delhi-headquartered Religare Enterprises Group acquired significant stakes in two US-based fund-of-fund houses to jumpstart its goal of building a Multi-Boutique Global Asset Management Platform. In February, Religare announced acquisition of controlling stake in Northgate Capital, a PE fund of funds which manages approximately $3 billion on behalf of more than 400 prominent institutional and high net worth families and individuals. In December, Religare announced signing of deal entailing acquisition of majority stake in Landmark Partners, a PE and Real Estate fund-of-funds focused on secondary transactions. Landmark manages ~$8.3 billion of assets. Overall, Religare is aiming to acquire/partner with 8-10 affiliates/asset management companies over the next 3 years targeting an assets under management of $100 billion. Venture Intelligence recently spoke to Paresh Thakker, who is responsible for l...