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Showing posts from December, 2011

ET NOW’s ‘Super Angels’ helps Fetise.com raise up to Rs. 25 Crores from Seedfund

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...

Deal Alert:Trinity Ventures, Nexus invest $5.3 M in database software firm ScaleArc

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...

Deal Alert- Accel Partners invests in Trivone Digital

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...

Kidswear retail gets serious

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 ...

"Focus on your 3Cs: Credibility, Cash Flow and Crew" – Rajeev Mecheri of Mecheri Smart Capital

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...

"2012 to be poor for exits, good for investments"

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 ...

"India’s entrepreneurial journey at least 5 yrs behind China’s"

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...