The Venture Intelligence Blog

Forbes India has an interesting profile of how Yogesh Mahansaria and his father  - who had to leave off-road tyre maker Balkrishna Tyres  post a family split - rebuilt a global business in the same space through a buyout of Israel-based Alliance Tire in partnership with Private Equity investor Warburg Pincus. (In April-2013, Warburg sold its stake in Alliance to fellow PE giant KKR at an enterprise value of $ 650 million.) Off-highway tyres are a $9 billion industry globally, about 10 percent of the global tyre market. These tyres are big—from two to 10 feet high—and heavy, ranging from 15 kg to 1,000 kg per tyre. Manufacturing is labour-intensive. Companies need to have a huge number of stock keeping units (SKUs, or the number of size variations in the same basic product). Alliance, for instance, has more than 2,000 SKUs. Compare that to a passenger tyre where, with just one SKU, companies can churn out a million units. This industry comprises several vertic...

From The Economic Times' feature on the unfolding legal battle between the fast food giant and Vikram Bakshi, its partner in the joint venture (Connnaught Plaza Restaurants) for Northern and Western India and how it's in stark contrast to its cozy relationship with its franchisee (and former JV partner) for West and South India, Hardcastle Restaurants. McDonald's, globally, does not like to own its ventures or operate them. Its preferred model is a low-risk, low-hassle one: licence out its good name for a fee to a local player; on top of that, charge a royalty linked to sales. So, the more the outlets sell, the more money McDonald's makes. Of its 34,000 outlets in 118 countries, 80% are through this franchise route. But when it entered developing countries, McDonald's often did so via the ownership model. A case in point was India, where it entered in 1995, with two 50:50 joint ventures, one with Bakshi and the other with Jatia. ...With both, McDona...

Seedfund has invested in Axis Rooms Travel Distribution Solutions, a maker of hotel room management software that enables hotels to update and share their inventory status with agents and online portals in real time. Axis was founded in 2009 by Anil Kumar Prasanna and Ravi Taneja, former employees of travel portal Via. Currently, online travel websites expect hotels that partner with them to set aside a certain number of rooms that may or may not be filled up. Another startup offering similar solution includes Hotelogix, a hotel management software provider that offers a distribution system as well. It raised funding from Accel Partners, Blume Ventures and Mumbai Angels in 2012.  Source: Economic Times   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Wee...

Paris, France-based cosmetics and beauty products maker L'Oreal has acquired Mumbai-based Cheryl 's Cosmeceuticals, marking L’Oreal’s first acquisition in the Indian market. Cheryl's Cosmeceuticals, founded in 1986 by Oscar and Cheryl Pereira, has a distribution network spanning over 10,000 salons in India and a turnover of approximately Rs 20 crore. The acquisition will broaden L'Oreal’s product offering in the Professional Products Division segment but also strengthen its skincare products and services portfolio. The French major has a presence in about 40,000 salons in the country. The Indian salon market, pegged at Rs 12,000 crore, is expected to grow at 30% annually for the next three years  Source: Business Line   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including t...

Switzerland-based responsAbility Investments has picked up a minority stake in Mumbai-based Punjab Renewable Energy Systems (PRES), an organised fuel aggregation and supply companies focused on agriculture residue. responsAbility will receive a board seat as part of the deal. This investment will be used for PRES’ proposed expansion into new locations in India and abroad. Intellecap acted as the sole advisor for the deal.  Source: Press Release   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

From a Businessworld article: The big four in the business — CMS, Brinks, SIS-Prosegur and Writers — share 80 per cent of the market between them and, on an average, cart Rs 20,000 crore in cash daily. Which means, in a year, it is a whopping Rs 73 lakh crore. Add all cash logistics firms (CLF) and it is Rs 91.25 lakh crore. A caveat: it does not mean that goods and services of equivalent value were sold or paid for; just that so much of cash moves about in vans. - See more at: http://www.businessworld.in/news/business/corporate/cash-movers/1065291/page-1.html#sthash.vhRuidoI.dpuf The big four in the business — CMS, Brinks, SIS-Prosegur and Writers — share 80 per cent of the market between them and, on an average, cart Rs 20,000 crore in cash daily. Which means, in a year, it is a whopping Rs 73 lakh crore. Add all cash logistics firms (CLF) and it is Rs 91.25 lakh crore. A caveat: it does not mean that goods and services of equivalent value were sold or paid for;...

Delhi-based web to print solutions company Printland has raised Rs 5 crore in the form of debt and equity from Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) as well as existing investors Evista Venture Capital and Sanjeev Kakar, co-founder of startup incubator Aegis Centre for Entrepreneurship. The company will use the funding to acquire specialised equipment and to expand solutions to the global market. It plans to raise Rs 10 crore by the end of the year and intends to get a strategic partner in web-to-print space. The company, with a printing facility in Delhi, has over 30,000 corporate and small and medium enterprise clients.  Source: Economic Times Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactio...

Social media intelligence platform Unmetric has raised $5.5 million in Series B financing led by new investor JAFCO Asia with participation from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. Unmetric raised $3.2 million in Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners in April 2012.  Unmetric offers social media benchmarking tools for C-suite executives and marketing professionals.  Source: NextBigWhat Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Simplilearn, a provider of online training and professional certification courses, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Helion Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital. The funding will allow the company to diversify and expand its course catalog to add more categories, focus on improving customer engagement by adding local team members in the US, UK, Australia and the Middle East, and enhancing its technology platform to make courses available on mobile devices. Simplilearn is an online learning destination for young working professionals who are looking at career enhancement through certification courses across industry verticals. It offers over 80 certification courses across 11 categories. At present, Simplilearn trains about 4000 professionals a month.  Source: Press Release Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in I...

Bangalore-based online experiential travel marketplace Thrillophilia has attracted $200,000 in a round led by Hyderabad Angels. iLabs Venture Capital Fund, Navlok Ventures and CIIE (part of IIM-A) have also participated in the round.  Thrillophilia lists over 400 activity-based tours and more than 1,000 off-beat travel experiences. Founded in 2009, Thrillophilia is present in 72 cities and has served more than 50,000 travelers and has over 500 corporate clients. Currently, the company has an 11 member team involved in "curation" of local travel product vendors which includes a lot of physical verification. The latest funding will be mainly used to expand this activity. Besides this, the capital will be invested in technology, digital marketing and expansion. Thrillophilia plans to include 6,000 experiences by December and serve one lakh experience hours a month towards the end of 2014.  Delhi-based iExperience, Mumbai-based Tushky (which also raised an angel round ...

Mumbai-based Micro Housing Finance Corporation (MHFC) has raised INR 35 crore in fresh equity from Unilazer Ventures and existing investors including India Financial Inclusion Fund and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The latest investment takes the total capital raised by MHFC to over INR 77 crore. It has raised a similar amount in debt. MHFC lends amounts upto INR 5 lakh comprising not more than 85% of the property value, for a period not exceeding 15 years. It charges interest rates of between 11% and 13%. Its book stands at INR 100 crore at present and the cumulative loan sanctions are at INR 165 crore. The company targets to grow its sanctions to INR 250 crore and its book size to INR 150 crore by end FY14. Apart from Mumbai, the company also has a presence in Pune, Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur, Nagpur, Indore, Bhopal and Kolkata.  Source: PTI   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (p...

N1 Media Pvt Ltd engaged in the business of providing content in the field of news and sports videos to television channels apart from “Mobile” and “Online” markets raised undisclosed growth equity from RVCF (Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund).  N1 Media is in the business of providing compelling and authoritative video content and ensuring its fast and efficient multi-platform delivery with its core team leveraging deep understanding of content needs in India.  The Jaipur based RVCF has invested in N1 Media through its SME Tech Fund which invests pan India in IT/ITes, education, healthcare, agro products, auto components and other high growth sectors .  Commenting on the transaction Mr. Arup Ghosh CEO N1 Media said that “The company is focused on revolutionizing the digital news content landscape in India by delivering solutions that enable clients to view news from many sources and locations. The company is known and acknowledged for its quality, breadth and...

SIDBI Venture Capital, via its Samriddhi Fund, has invested Rs.25 crore in Kolkata-based Glocal Healthcare Systems Pvt Ltd. PXV Law Partners and Kochhar & Co were advisors to the deal.  Glocal has taken up a two-year and Rs 400-crore project for setting up 50 affordable new secondary hospitals in rural and semi-urban areas across six States. The project would be funded through equity and debt. Glocal has decided to set up the new hospitals as separate corporate entities as its subsidiaries, which can take in local equity partners, primarily physicians, up to a limit of 35%. Each of the Rs 8 crore hospital will have 100 beds built on around 15,000 square feet land with a G+6 structure and will provide services in medicine, surgery, gynaecology, paediatrics, critical care and emergency, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, ENT and dental care.  From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database: In January 2011 Sequoia Capital India and Elevar Equity had invested $1.33 mil...

Ahmedabad-based Atishya Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs NPASource.com , a portal focusing on resolution of stressed assets has received funding from the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).  The portal aims to undertake over Rs 600 crore worth of e-auctions of various banks’ non-performing assets in 2013-14. The portal is already empanelled with 9 banks for conducting e-auctions of their NPAs: Dena Bank, IDBI Bank, SIDBI, Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank, Indian Bank, State Bank of Hyderabad, Bank of Maharashtra as well as Kotak Mahindra Bank.  Source: Business Line Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Ogilvy & Mather is to acquire a majority stake in Hyderabad-based digital marketing company PennyWise Solutions. Started by five alumni of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), PennyWise Solutions specialises in custom application development, Web development, digital advertising, social media monitoring and data analytics. Clients of the firm include Vodafone India, Johnson & Johnson, JMP Solicitors and Fabmart, among others. Founded in 2003, it has over 140 employees.  Source: Business Line   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Indian Angel Network members Hari Balasubramaniam and P Gopinath have invested in Chennai-based Mukunda Foods, a design & development start-up that makes Dosamatic, a table top Dosa making machine. Mukunda Foods is also an IAN incubatee company, which graduated from the IAN Incubator and raised investment.  Mukunda foods was founded by Eshwar K Vikas & Sudeep Sabat in May 2012 while they were still in college. Mukunda Foods holds the patent for DosaMatic and will use the funds raised to develop the product, establish it as a brand, streamline the manufacturing and create sales and service channels.  Source: NextBigWhat    Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter. ...

US-based Endurance International, owner of Domain.com and HostGator, will spend up to $110 million in buying Mumbai-headquartered Directi , India’s largest domain registrar. Endurance plans to raise up to $400 million in a Nasdaq IPO and part of the funds will be spent on buying Directi. The acquisition depends on a number of targets related to the IPO and Directi’s revenue performance. The acquisition would close in the fourth quarter this year. Endurance has also agreed to bankroll Directi’s new gTLD auctions to the tune of $62 million.Since December 2011, Endurance has been majority owned by Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs. Established in 1998, Directi has over 1000 employees and over 25 Internet Software Products for a global audience. It claims over 10,00,000 customers and over 50,000 channel partners. Source: Press Release Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capit...

Chatha Foods Pvt Ltd which is India’s leading Frozen and Ready to Eat (RTE) meat foods manufacturer raised undisclosed growth equity from RVCF (Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund). Chatha Foods retails an array of RTE & Frozen Meat products under the Brand “Swiss Naturen”.It is also the largest supplier of frozen chicken products to Domino’s,Subway,Papa Johns and several other leading QSRs in India. The Jaipur based RVCF has invested in Chatha Foods for a significant minority stake through its SME Tech Fund, which invests pan India in IT/ITes, education, healthcare, agro products, and other high growth sectors. Commenting on the transaction Mr. Paramjit Chatha said that “The Company has been witnessing high growth from both its institutional clients including the leading Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) in India and at the retail market where the demand for high quality & innovative RTE chicken products is high. The capital infusment will help the company increase c...

Delhi based Langhar, which allows people to buy and sell home cooked food online, has secured a funding of $1,50,000 from ARK Challenge, a startup boot-camp. Earlier, Langhar raised $20,000 of seed money from TLabs as part of its third batch. Langhar was started in November 2012 by Karanpreet Singh, Pankaj Sharma, Sunil Kumar and Pawan Saini. It currently offers its services in Delhi. People can order home cooked food or dine at the chef’s place picked from the site. Likewise, users who are fond of cooking can upload their recipes and earn some extra income. The web and mobile based service is clocking revenues of $2,000 per month in individual subscriptions and $10,000 each quarter for business subscriptions.  Source: NextBigWhat.com Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list includin...

From the Business Today article : Credila started operations in March 2008, two months after DSP Merrill Lynch invested in the company. From March 2008 until HDFC bought out DSP Merrill, Credila had disbursed only Rs 20 crore. Since then it has sanctioned more than Rs 2,000 crore and disbursed nearly half that amount. The big surprise was in 2012 when Credila received more than 90,000 online applications for a cumulative loan amount of over Rs 8,000 crore. "It was more than we could handle," says Anil Bohora, Chief Operating Officer at Credila. The company looks at applicants' credit worthiness, the repaying capacity of parents, collateral, and the institute they are applying to while scrutinising loan applications. ...In some ways, Credila mirrors HDFC's own journey. HDFC was founded by Deepak Parekh's uncle, H.T. Parekh, in 1977. It had the first-mover advantage as there was no other mortgage lender in the private sector at the time. But this wa...

Accelerator TLabs has announced its Fall 2013 batch of nine start-ups. With this batch, the accelerator - an initiative of Times Internet - takes its portfolio count to 23. The latest start-ups are:  BetaGlide A cloud-based platform for mobile application developers and testers which enables them to test the apps in a real time environment.  JiffStore A mobile commerce start-up that helps supermarkets to sell groceries online, giving consumers the facility to shop on the move and helping grocery chains to leverage the power of mobile and ecommerce.  Vozeal A platform for video advertisers and publishers. Brands can increase their reach through a network of publishers which helps in increasing page views.  News in Shorts The startup aggregates and summarizes news in 60 words. Present on mobile and web it provides snippets of popular stories flowing across internet.  Labforth A cloud-based solution for laboratory management and marketing...

Mumbai-based digital media company To The New has acquired Singapore-headquartered social media analytics company Thoughtbuzz . The acquisition will allow To The New to integrate social media analytics into its digital services portfolio thus expanding its digital ecosystem to marketing, content, technology and analytics. ThoughtBuzz provides social media intelligence services for Toyota, Air Asia, Raffles Hotels, 3M, Dr Batra, The Economist, Edelman, Mediacom, Mindshare and more across sectors like automobiles, FMCG, airlines, telecom, hospitality, consumer electronics, politics, entertainment and retail. From the Venture Intelligence M&A Deal database: In July 2013, To The New had acquired Singapore-based Techsailor.  From the Deal Digest Archive: (March 6, 2013): Four Cross Media had invested INR 75 Crores in To The New to expand its Indian operations and scout for new acquisitions.  Source: Best Media Info   Venture Intelligence is the leading ...

Ad network player Networkplay has acquired yoCAPTCHA, an ad platform by Innovese Technologies. Following the deal, Innovese co-founders Dhruv Sogani will head Business Development at Networkplay and Ankit Gupta will join as Head of Technology. Launched in 2011 by Innovese, yoCAPTCHA is an advertising platform that transforms difficult to read CAPTCHAs into ad units. The company claims that it has over 100 publishers and has served more than a billion CAPTCHA impressions. Networkplay was founded by a team of ex-Yahoo India employees, Rammohan Sundaram, Sunil Punjabi, Ampreet Singh and Viren Anand in 2008. Sundaram and Punjabi have quit the business, while Singh now heads the company as its CEO. The venture was incubated by WebChutney, and funded by Capital18. NetworkPlay was acquired by Gruner and Jahr (G+J), a part of the Bertelsmann group.  Source: MediaNama Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions...

Delhi-based Zoutons Digital Media Company, which owns and operates the online coupons aggregation site Zoutons.com , has raised Rs 20 lakh in seed funding from digital marketing company 3.14 Digital. The startup was also incubated by 3.14 Digital. The funds raised will be used to enhance the technology.  Source: Press Release   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Mumbai-based social ecommerce startup Klip.in has raised Rs.50 lakh funding from Venture Nursery and Mumbai Angels. The company helps users discover unique lifestyle products from across the web by aggregating and curating them based on their social connections and interest graph. From the Venture Intelligence Incubation Database: Klip was part of VentureNursery’s second batch that concluded in April.  Source: Times of India   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Singapore-based angel investing group CCube Angels has agreed to buy a minority stake for INR 4.5 crores in Delhi-based Omnipresent Retail India, which runs online retail portal edabba.com . edabba sells a range of products, including electronics, personal accessories and jewellery – mostly in smaller towns and cities – and is supported by over 400 contact centres offering after sales service. The company will use the latest round of funding to expand its contact centres to over 1,000 in the next six months.  Source: Times of India   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Gurgaon-based enMarkit, a social commerce startup, is among ten startup teams that joins Singapore-based accelerator JFDI Asia’s latest batch. The accelerator offers S$15,000 in net cash investment, over S$100,000 in technical facilities, office accommodation, mentoring and an introduction to more than 100 active early-stage investors, in return for equity stakes in the companies. enMarkit, founded last year by Vipin Agarwal and Ekta Mittal, offers a 3-minute, 3-click online platform to enable online buyers and sellers to set up their virtual profiles or stores. In addition to direct sales solutions, it also offers a feature called enMarkit ONE Store which offers indirect marketing and lead generation channels that integrate across social networks. Source: StartupCentral Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here t...

Ahmedabad-based cloud enterprise collaboration platform Gridle has been selected as an incubatee at IIM Ahmedabad’s startup accelerator programme iAccelerator, which closed applications for its 2013 batch about a month ago. Gridle was founded last year by Yash Shah, Abhishek Doshi and Anupama Panchal.  Gridle can be used to collaborate on projects in teams of 15-20, share files, assign tasks, share in-house expertise and train new recruits. Gridle was to be virtually incubated by Indian Angel Network (IAN). However, with its inclusion into the 2013 iAccelerator batch, the IAN incubation is currently on the backburner.  Source: StartupCentral   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Ne...