The Venture Intelligence Blog

From the Press Release: Trivitron Healthcare Private Limited (Trivitron) announced today that Fidelity Growth Partners India (FGPI) hasanchored a round of investmentof approximately INR 400crores (US$ 75 million).This investment also provides partial exits for ePlanet Ventures and Headland Capital, who have been invested in Trivitron since 2007.  For the past fifteen years, Trivitronhas been India’s largest exclusive pan India wholesale distributor and after-sales support provider of medical equipment and devices. Its areas of expertise include imaging, lab diagnostics, cardiology, critical care,renal care, operating room and ophthalmology equipment. Trivitron is the partner of choice for anyforeign manufacturer looking to enter the country on account of its strong reputation and track record, national sales-and-service network and robust logistics infrastructure.  Over the past few years, subsidiaries and joint ventures of Trivitron havebeen steadily laying the f...

Ernst & Young, which advised a total of 44 transactions, topped the Venture Intelligence India League Tables as the Most Active Transaction Advisor (for both Private Equity and M&A deals) in the nine months ended September 2012. AZB & Partners topped the Most Active Legal Advisor Table for Private Equity transactions and Amarchand & Mangaldas topped as the Most Active Legal Advisor for M&A transactions in the same period. 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 Ernst & Young advised 24 PE deals during the period, including SBI Macquarie’s $150-M investment in Ashoka Concessions and IDFC PE’s investment in Star Agri Warehousing and Collateral Management. Other transaction advisors who advised a significant number of PE deal...

Businessworld has an investigative report on how Indian e-commerce firms are "working around" the restrictive laws on FDI in retail.  The B2C company acts as a ‘front’ for the B2B firm and in most cases is publicly portrayed as a packaging and logistics entity. As soon as a customer orders a product on Jabong, Jade eServices conducts what the industry commonly calls a “flash sale” with Xerion, which then bills, packs and ships the product under its name, technically keeping the foreign-funded firm at an ‘arm’s length’ from selling directly to the consumer. But does it? “We are fully compliant with laws in India,” says an e-mailed response from Jabong, though many legal experts beg to differ. ...The money is raised by Jasper Infotech, a marketing firm, while B2C entity Spinel Tradecom bills the consumer (only when products are warehoused within). Neither finds a mention in the release. Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl did not respond to queries. As for flipkart.com, it...

While Pravin Jadhav, founder of social media startup Wishberg , did not mean this great post to be a critique of investors (and more as an "Do's and Don'ts" list for other Indian startup founders), the extracts below pertaining to his interaction with "investors" sound scary. A known investor turned up 35 minutes late for a meeting, did not apologize, later he ordered food and drinks with no courtesy to offer us. During the discussion he was ogling at girls in the restaurant all the time, found someone he knew and told her he will see her in 5 minutes – all this right in front of us. We ended the meeting in next 2 minutes and walked away. Another day, another prominent investor met us. He disagreed on one of our points, he started off, “Do you know whom you’re talking to? Do you know who I am?” We maintained our cool, thanked him for his time with a smile and promised ourselves never to see him again. ...We had many funny incidents around ge...

  Venture Intelligence spoke to Murli Ravi, Head – South Asia, Jafco Asia, about some of the firm’s portfolio companies that have been in the news recently as well as other trends. (This interview first appeared as part of the latest quarterly Venture Intelligence India Venture Capital report .) Jafco Asia is a VC investor that is wholly owned by Tokyo Stock Exchange listed Jafco Co. Ltd, one of Japan’s largest PE companies. Ravi, who joined Jafco Asia in 2008, is based at the firm’s Singapore office. He represents the firm on the boards of India-based companies like Microqual (telecom equipment), CustomerXPs (enterprise software), Microland (remote IT infra management), Mistral Solutions (embedded technology) and Vriti Infocom (online education). Prior to Jafco, Ravi had worked at Temasek Holdings, RedPill Solutions and INSEAD. Venture Intelligence: Microqual has been reported to be close to a liquidity event – either via an IPO or reverse merger with a listed entity. L...

  In a recent interview to Venture Intelligence, Srinath Srinivasan, Chief Executive Officer of Oman India Joint Investment Fund (OIJIF) , discusses the first two investments announced by the JV fund of State Bank of India (SBI) and State General Reserve Fund of Oman(SGRF). Prior to OIJIF, Srinivasan had headed Indian PE investment unit of South Africa’s FirstRand Bank and before that was Head-Private Equity at Reliance Capital. (This interview first appeared as part of the latest quarterly Venture Intelligence India Roundup report .)   Venture Intelligence: OIJIF has announced two investments in succession: Rs.55-Cr in the privately held electronics boards & systems maker Indus Teqsite and Rs.72-Cr in the publicly listed explosives maker Solar Industries. Can you tell us what attracted you to the companies? Is their having defense as one of their key verticals a contributing factor? Srinath Srinivasan: Both the companies have strong competitive advantage and thei...

From the Press Release:   Centrum Capital Ltd. today announced that it has successfully raised close to 10 million dollars for Olive Bar and Kitchen Pvt. Ltd. The fund raised will be used to expand their presence across the globe. Centrum Capital Ltd. acted as the sole financial advisor to Olive Bar and Kitchen Pvt. Ltd . (“Olive”) and has successfully raised an undisclosed amount of private equity capital from Aditya Birla Private Equity .  Established in the year 2000, Olive has pioneered the casual fine dining segment in India with its flagship “Olive” brand. Promoted by renowned restaurateur Mr. A D Singh, Olive operates a chain of boutique casual fine dining restaurants straddling multiple genres, a high profile night club, and a niche catering business across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Olive’s portfolio of brands include “Olive”, “Monkey Bar”, “LAP”, “Ai”, and “Soul Fry”. With the current fund raise, the company plans to drive growth through a multi-pr...

From the Press Release:   VentureNursery, India’s first angel-backed start-up accelerator has announced a seed investment by its angel investors in Oravel Stays, based in Gurgaon.  Oravel [www.oravel.com] is focused on the short and midterm rentals space and is an aggregator of Bed and Breakfast, Private Rooms and Serviced Apartments which enables travellers to book clean, comfortable, affordable spaces. Oravel, which is primarily focussed on NCR region at present, is getting very good traction from SME’s, International, MICE travellers and medical tourists. The company’s website has over 4000 properties listed across metros and others parts of India. 20% of its properties are theme based and offer a unique stay experience to the guests.  Oravel was founded in 2011 by 18 year old Ritesh Agarwal, ¬who comes from a family business background of Infrastructure. The company joined VentureNursery’s acceleration program in July, 2012 and has graduated with a Plat...

Social Ventures attract 11 investments worth $45-M in Q3’12 Social Venture Investors (also called Impact Investors) participated in investments worth $45 million across 11 transactions in India during the three months ending September 2012, according to a study by Venture Intelligence. Of these, three investments were co-investments with regular VC firms. The impact investment figures were flat compared to the same period in 2011 (which had witnessed $43 million being invested across 11 transactions), but significantly higher than the immediate previous quarter (about $22 million across nine investments). The latest figures take the total Social VC investments in the first nine months of 2012 to $103 million across 31 deals, down 47.5% in value terms (21% in volume) compared to the $196 million across 39 deals during the same period in 2011, the Venture Intelligence research showed. The Rs.80 crore (about $14.5 million) fourth round funding raised by Bangalore-based urban microfin...

Volume of investments in first 9 months keeps pace with 2011; Value down by 22% Venture Capital firms invested $200 million over 52 deals in India during the three months ending September 2012, according to a study by Venture Intelligence. The amount invested during Q3’12 was significantly lower compared to the same quarter in 2011 (which had witnessed $256 million being invested across 51 deals) and flat when compared to the immediate previous quarter ($204 million across 56 deals). The latest figures take the total VC investments in the first nine months of 2012 to $596 million across 157 deals, down over 22% compared to the $768 million across 153 deals during the same period in 2011. Top growth investments during the quarter included the $20 million third round raised by e-tailer Yebhi.com from Fidelity Growth Partners India and Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from existing investors; the $14.5 million fourth round raised by urban microfinance firm Janalakshmi Financial...

Private Equity firms invested about $2,521 million across 97 deals during the quarter ended September 2012, according to a study by Venture Intelligence. Thanks to the $1 billion investment by Bain Capital in US listed, Gurgaon based BPO firm Genpact, the investment amount showed a growth of 4.4% over that invested in the same period last year ($2,415 million across 120 transactions) and a healthy 32% over the immediate previous quarter (which had witnessed $1,909 million being invested across 105 transactions). Despite the quarterly up tick, the total PE investments in the first nine months of 2012 at $6,488 million across 309 transactions, significantly trails the $8,882 million across 357 transactions in the same period in 2011. (Please Note: The above figures do not include PE investments in Real Estate.) Bain Capital Partners’ purchase of shares held by previous PE investors - General Atlantic and Oak Hill Capital - in NYSE-listed, Gurgoan-based BPO firm Genpact for approximate...

Oil India Limited (OIL) and Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) have jointly acquired a 30% stake in Nasdaq-listed Carrizo Oil & Gas Inc’s (Carrizo) liquid rich shale assets in the Denver–Julesburg Basin in Colorado, USA at a total investment of $82.5 million. The deal, which represents OIL and IOCL’s first shale acquisition in the US, includes an upfront cash payment of $41.25 million and the assumption of $41.25 million of Carrizo’s future drilling and development costs. BMO Capital Markets acted as exclusive financial advisor to OIL on the transaction. Thompson & Knight LLP acted as legal counsel, while Ernst & Young and Halliburton acted as tax and accounting and technical due diligence consultants, respectively. OIL and IOCL, through their wholly-owned US subsidiaries, will receive 30% of Houston, Texas-based Carrizo’s interest in approximately 60,000 net acres where the partners will target development of the Niobrara shale. As part of the transaction, OIL an...

From the latest Venture Intelligence quarterly PE Roundup report : The leading Indian stock market indices - the BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty – closed Q3 2012 up almost 8%, bettered only by the commodity producing markets like Russia and Brazil (which had gained over 8.7%) and the German DAX (which gained almost 10.9%). 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 including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

From the Press Release: Fulcrum Venture India , a highly successful early stage venture capital investor started in 2000 by Krishna Ramanathan as a proprietary fund, today announced its exit from Casa Grande with a company valuation of 100 cr making a 10x net multiple. One of its first investments, Fulcrum Venture India invested in Casa Grande Pvt. Ltd. in financial year 2004 a promising new player in the real estate space in Chennai. Casa Grande has generated significant returns for the Fulcrum portfolio with a gross IRR of 54.46%.  The secret of success behind this partnership, according to KR Krishna, Founder Partner, Fulcrum Venture India is “We believe in giving emerging entrepreneurs full freedom to run the business according to their own vision. We have trust in their ability to freely innovate winning products and services. As with Casa Grande, we are pleased to have been a part of the company’s journey, honed and nurtured it to a size and scale where today it has...