The Venture Intelligence Blog

From the Press Release:   Vyome Biosciences Private Limited, an innovation driven dermatology company focused on developing novel and innovative treatments for common skin conditions such as dandruff, acne, pigmentation disorders and wound healing, today announced that it has closed Series A financing round of Rs. 18.50 crore. The round was led by IndoUS Venture Partners (IUVP), with Aarin Capital and Navam Capital as coinvestors.  Vyome will deploy the new financing to advance the clinical development of its lead antidandruff products, and to accelerate the pre-clinical development of its anti-acne products. These safer and more effective next-generation treatments are being developed by harnessing emerging genetic information on the disease-causing microbes with advances in nanotechnology. Vyome has already filed multiple Indian and Global patents on these technologies. “Our vision is to emerge as a company that launches global products from India and competes with...

Cross Posted from the Venture Intelligence Entrevista blog : Latha Rajan & K. Pandia Rajan of Ma Foi ( B i o s ) In conversation with K. Satyanarayan , Co-founder of regional language publishing firm New Horizon Media. (Recorded on August 15, 2012 in Chennai.) Highlights: Takeaways for Other Entrepreneurs: (Click on the links for the video segments) Don't add artificial constraints when it comes to entrepreneurship KPR: Separating home and work, politics & business - we tend to have many boundaries where none need to exist. These are Western notions and mind blocks that we can revisit. Being a Husband-Wife Entrepreneur Combination was never a major hassle for us. In fact, as Latha says often, we would have probably fallen apart but for Ma Foi! Latha Rajan: In the early days, he used to travel 25 days a month and I used to travel 10 days a month. But since I was there within the system, I could understand (the pressures and issues). Both of us knew what we were workin...

From Business Today ...lately a new breed of brokers has emerged, who want to break out of this image. "The first question customers ask is: 'Why should I trust you'," says Samarjit Singh, Founder and Managing Director, IndiaHomes. "So we take special pains to ensure we win their trust." Leading the pack are Investors Clinic and Better Option Propmart (BOP), which notched up revenues of Rs 148 crore and Rs 150 crore, respectively in 2011/12. The bulk of their earnings came from residential properties. ...In their wake came others. There is IndiaHomes, the reincarnated face of Agni Property, which began in 2008 as a traditional property agent, but which in early 2010 decided to concentrate on the primary home market - selling only newly built residential properties. It had revenues of Rs 26 crore in 2011/12. There is also AllCheckDeals, with revenues of Rs 17.5 crore last year, whose very name incorporates the credo that it accepts payments only by cheque. It...

From Business Today : Analysts say Bajpai has been lucky to get 4G spectrum dirt cheap compared to rivals such as Reliance Infotel, which paid $2.7 billion for its pan-India licence. Bajpai paid less than 10 per cent of that (Rs 1,058 crore) to get licences in circles that account for 30 per cent of the population. "Today, 26 per cent of telecom revenues are generated from the five states where Bajpai won bids," says an analyst. ...Bajpai says Tikona will launch 4G services next year. He wants RIL and Bharti to develop the ecosystem of vendors, test the new technology and bring down handset prices. Today, Tikona scores over the others thanks to its experience dealing with broadband customers. Tikona's average revenue per user is Rs 600 against less than Rs 300 for voice operators. "We are on the way to profitability in the third year itself," says Bajpai. This will be one of the fastest break-evens in the telecom sector (broadband), where companies typically tak...

From Businessworld Amagi’s key message was to explain the benefits of local advertising to television channels and cable and DTH operators. In June 2008, the trio purchased a set-top box from the US for $5,000 only to realise that it used an archaic analog technology that used cables and was server-based. But they decided to make it work on chipsets and consumer digital signal processing. So, they decided to create something that would not only be easy to install but would also be easy for the DTH and cable operators to adapt their set-top boxes to. Once the technology was sorted, they had to sell the idea. The business model was simple: buy inventory from television channels and sell that to local advertisers. Amagi initially started with retail, jewellery and real estate, and currently works with regional FMCG brands and SMEs who need regional (state-wide) advertising. There are 160 million television sets in India and 600 million viewers, with cable and DTH covering close to 120 m...

Rediff.com has an interesting profile of the Chennai-based Platform as a Service (PaaS) software product firm and its founder Suresh Sambandam (who grew up in the small Tamilnadu town of Cuddalore). Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A transactions in India as well as Financials & Valuations of Private Companies in the country. Click Here to view our products list and free sample newsletters and reports.