The Venture Intelligence Blog

Inthree, which operates a rural distribution network, has attracted investment from the Indian Angel Network. The funding will be principally used to fuel Inthree’s evolution into a complete rural consumer company with a strong sourcing and technology backbone. The company is currently concentrating on south India. IAN’s Ashvin Chaddha , who co-led the investment, will join the Inthree board.  Source: Business Standard   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.

Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) has invested INR 12.4 crores in Edutel Technologies , a Bangalore-based provider of virtual classrooms for students in government and low-fee private schools. The company aims to help high school students from low-income backgrounds to perform well in competitive examination for professional courses / college admissions and also provide vocational education. The investment will help Edutel scale it's learning solution to underserved schools in India. J. Sagar Associates (JSA) comprising of Partners – Sajai Singh & Gerald Manoharan; and Associate – Vishnu Nair advised and assisted Edutel in connection with the equity investment. MSDF was advised by AZB & Partners . Unitus Capital was the financial advisor on this transaction.  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 Her

Aspada Investment Company has made a commitment of INR 11 Crore ($1.8 million) to Xamcheck , a third-party assessment, test design, and feedback solution for K-12 schools in India. Xamcheck was incubated within Policy Innovations, an educational consultancy founded by the team in 2009. Aspada’s investment will be invested in the backend technology while also focusing on achieving scale in bringing Xamcheck to the thousands of underserved K-12 schools in 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.

Bangalore-based financier for the micro, small, and medium enterprises Kinara Capital has received an equity investment from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The Dell family foundation will hold a minority equity stake in the company, and Satyam Darmora, Portfolio Lead, Family Economic Stability will join the Board of Directors. From the Venture Intelligence Social VC Investments Database: Kinara Capital had earlier raised funding from Unitus and Sorenson Impact Foundation.  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 Transactions Newsletter.

PE firm Carlyle's India MD Shankar Narayanan and angel group ah! Ventures have invested INR 1.5 crore in Mumbai-based Testbook which provides free mock tests for entrance exams such as GATE and CAT. The start-up was founded by six IIT-ians in 2012. 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.

Indian Angel Network’s UK operation has announced an investment in Lowdownapp Ltd , a London based meeting management app maker that offers users a snapshot and in-depth view of attendee information, company details, etc. It fuses together a slice of the calendar in-built in the mobile device with a custom-built narrow artificial intelligence engine, presenting information instantly for the benefit of professionals. 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 including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

US retailer Target Corporation has roped in a second set of start-ups for its accelerator programme based in Bangalore. While the first batch focused on themes like personalisation search, content and mobile, the second batch focuses on core retail solutions. The new batch includes Torch Technologies, which has developed a hardware plug-in device for brick and mortar stores to make data-driven decisions. Other solutions include tools to sell ads on a smartphone's lock screen (Twiddly), platforms to help companies create 3D ads and apps (Visarity), a visual search engine for e-commerce (Wazzat Fashion) and tools for augmented reality (Whodat Spaces).  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 Exha

In a "shotgun wedding ", the long term ramifications of which were somewhat drowned amidst the Diwali break last week, the Union Government has ordered the forced merger of two private sector companies in "public interest": National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) with its publicly traded parent company - Financial Technologies (FTIL) . Creditably, Mint had front paged a well argued opinion piece (by Mobis Philipose) titled "Order violates fundamental principles of rule of law". Extracts (emphasis mine): Here’s the main problem: the government is forcing a parent company to take on the liability of a subsidiary company, ignoring the fact the subsidiary was formed as a separate entity precisely so that the parent company’s liability is limited to the extent of its investment in the firm . ... who’s to say that the dues of investors in NSEL’s products serve a greater public interest than the interests of FTIL’s minority shareholders? An argument i

Bangalore-based outsourced software product development firm ‘ People 10 ’ has raised about INR 10 crore from US-based fund Ideaworks Partners in a Series A round of fundraising. Founded in 2011, the firm has presence in the US, Germany and Canada, besides India. RSVP Capital Advisors was the investment advisor for the transaction. People10 plans to use the funds to build a stronger local presence in the US and expand its client base. It plans to expand the size of its workforce from the current 60 to 100 in the next quarter. The company expects to earn revenue of INR 10 crore by March 2015.  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 Transactions Newsletter.

Last-minute hotel booking start-up HotelsAroundYou has raised seed funding from more than 10 angel investors associated with early-stage accelerator VentureNursery. The investors include Patni scions Amit and Arihant, Aditya Birla Capital Advisors chief executive Bharat Banka and Fame Cinemas Founder Shravan Shroff.  Started in 2013 by college friends Harsha Nallur, Mohsin Dingankar and Animesh Chaudhary, HotelsAroundYou was chosen for VentureNursery's bootcamp in May 2014. The company, which has launched operations in Mumbai, connects last-minute travellers with hotels looking to sell off unsold hotel rooms for that day. The company aims to solve a problem for frequent business travellers. It will use the funding to expand operations to Pune next month and to six more cities by mid next year.  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

Notemybook , a start-up based in Mumbai that aims to make books available to students at 40% less cost, has been incubated at Vivekanand Education Society's Institute of Technology (VESIT) located in Chembur, Mumbai. Notemybook enables students to register as a buyer or seller or both. The start-up is run by two students of VESIT .  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.

Economic Times has an interesting interview with Sequoia Capital's Silicon Valley-based partner Douglas (Doug) Leone on the firm's investments in India and elsewhere. Extracts (emphasis mine): On why Sequoia is sitting out the Indian e-commerce gold rush (for the most part): It is clear that online retail is a large topline market; it is yet to be proven if it is going to be a profitable bottom-line market. We have chosen not to participate because we understood that it is going to play out this way. I heard Bezos was here writing a $2 billion cheque. We like companies that can get big and powerful on $50 million or less and not two, three, four or five billion. Times may change, we may like to participate. We are investors in Alibaba, but we don't want to go at a time when we know that after us billions of dollars (more) have to be raised. On being a VC: We like founders that are very determined, people whom conventional wisdom will (term) as: "They

Noida-based lingerie e-tailer Cloe has raised an investment from a group of investors in Germany "with deep roots in consumer retail and Internet".  From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database: In May 2013, Cloe had attracted INR 4.72 cr from Mountain Apollo. (Subscribers to the database can login to view the deal structuring and other transaction details.) 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.

Retail brand Biba Apparels has acquired 26.66% stake in Anjuman Brand Designs which is engaged in the business of designing, manufacture and sale of garments under the brand name "ANJU MODI" and has 10 exclusive stores in India and is also engaged in e-commerce. Biba also acquired certain convertible debentures in Anjuman Brand Designs Pvt Ltd. Khaitan & Co advised Anju Modi. From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database: In September 2013, Warburg Pincus and Faering Capital had invested $54 million in Biba Apparels. 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.

Former Infosys board member V Balakrishnan has invested Rs 25 lakh in Bangalore-based IT solutions provider Avekshaa Technologies. Balakrishnan has joined Avekshaa's board as an independent director and is mentoring the three-year-old company. Avekshaa's proprietary platform Performance, Availability, Security and Scalability (PASS) helps enterprises mitigate IT related business risks and make their IT systems faster and efficient.  Last month, Balakrishnan and his predecessor at Infy, TV Mohandas Pai together invested Rs 50 lakh in Bangalore-based compliance ERP provider Clonect Solutions that offers enterprise governance, risk management and compliance management solutions.  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:

V Resorts, a Noida-based company aggregating boutique hotel chains, has raised close to $2 million (about Rs. 12 crore) in pre-series A funding from Seedfund. V Resorts, founded by Aditi Balbir in 2012, aggregates existing properties and takes over the management and operations of those properties on a revenue share basis on a 10-15 year lease. The company will use the new capital to expand its capacity of rooms to 300 from the current 80 over the next 5-6 months. V Resorts currently operates six properties located in Uttarakhand (Sattal, Ramgarh, Corbett, Pauri and Rajaji National Park), Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. By March 2015, it hopes to hit at least 10 properties.  The company had earlier raised a seed round from Bedrock Ventures, which had also incubated the venture. Bedrock has not participated in the current round but remains invested in the company.  Source: The Economic Times   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Co

Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) has signed on as the brand ambassador for fashion e-tailer Yepme in a deal that is structured in a such a way that lets the actor pick up a stake in Yepme going forward. Yepme is in the midst of closing a $30-million financing round with a consortium of four investors, including its two existing investors Helion Venture Partners and Capricorn Venture Partners.  The e-tailer, which only sells private brands, plans to spend Rs 15-20 crore over the next three months on its multi-media advertising campaign featuring SRK. The company has in all raised $21 million across three previous rounds, the last one being in December 2013. Yepme is expected to end the year with Rs 200-crore sales. Source: The 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 i

Mumbai-based Timesaverz, a platform to obtain people for home services, has raised seed funding from a clutch of angel investors led by former Yahoo executive Neville Taraporewalla and GSF Accelerator founder Rajesh Sawhney. The other investors include Ashish Jalani, founder at eTailing India, Dinesh Agarwal, founder of Indiamart, and Nish Bhutani, COO of Saffronart. Timesaverz offers handyman and cleaning services and appliances repair. Each service agent is background checked, skill-set verified and soft-skills trained.  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.

Hyderabad Angels and Chennai Angels - via 20 of their members including former Microsoft India Development Center MD Srini Koppulu, ex-CEO and cofounder of Sify.com R Ramaraj, Suresh Productions CEO Suresh Babu and founder of Computer Age Management Services V Shankar - have invested in Bangalore-based Onlineprasad.com. Niraj Mital from Hyderabad Angels would be joining OnlinePrasad's board representing the larger investor group. OnlinePrasad started by 26-year old Goonjan Mall has been seed funded by the storied entrepreneur duo K Ganesh and Meena Ganesh and The Morpheus. The company is a niche e-tailer that is networked to 50 temples in India, and uses the mobile and web platforms to deliver religious offerings such as prasad and other products to users’ doorstep.  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

MediAngels.com, an online platform which allows patients to consult the specialised doctors from across the globe, has raised $1 million (INR 6 crore) from Ventureast Tenet Fund and Government of India's Technology Development Board. The company, founded by two doctors, is looking to raise a total $2 million in the current round of funding. MediAngels provides services like online and video consultation, online medical record keeping and even ordering pharmaceuticals. The company charges Rs 250 per query and Rs 1,500 for video consultation. The new funding will be used to expand services portfolio and also provide voice based consultation. Funding will also be used to enhance operations & sales team, especially to increase tie ups with insurers and corporate clients. MediAngels had earlier raised a seed round of Rs 2.4 crore from HDFC Venture.  Source: Economic Times Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials,

Bangalore-based ShieldSquare has raised INR 2 crore from 15 investors including Girish Mathrubootham of Freshdesk; Murugavel Janakiraman of BharatMatrimony; Sanjay Anandaram of Seedfund; red-Bus founders Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and Sudhakar Pasupunuri, and existing investor Chandu Nair, member of Chennai Angels.  Established by Pavan Thatha, Rakesh Thatha, Vasanth Kumar G, Jyoti Kakatkar and Srikanth Konijeti in March 2014, Shield Square is a cloud-based security solution that helps online portals protect their content from unauthorised third parties. Customers include social networking sites, e-commerce portals, content websites and classified or listing sites. ShieldSquare graduated out of Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in November 2013. ShieldSquare will look to raise approximately $2 million in Series A funding in the second half of 2015.  Source: Economic Times   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financial

From the Mint article He did almost nothing for five years after his graduation from Mithibai College in Mumbai. “My wife got a job at Jet Airways right after college and my only job for the next five years was to pick her up from the airport everyday,” he said. ...Gupta realized that business is what he wanted to do. In 1999, he started a garage named Elite Class. He used to offer vehicle repairs and annual maintenance services to customers. Then in 2001, he set up V-Link Automotive Services Pvt. Ltd, which supplied vehicles to firms. “Tata Infotech Ltd approached us to provide bus service. It all began with a bus, a driver and a cleaner,” he recalled. V-Link still offers vehicle services to companies under the same brand. Six years later, Gupta launched Meru Cab. “When we decided to start Meru, we needed funding and India Value Fund stepped in to help,” Gupta said. He counts every penny. “India Value wanted to splurge on branding and at that time I felt spending so much on bra

From the Mint article : Patel launched Vini Cosmetics in 2010, having spent two decades at Paras Pharmaceuticals, which he co-owned with his brothers; he had a 24% stake in it. Following differences with his brothers, he sold his stake to private equity firm Actis Capital for $43 million in 2006 and exited the company, which was acquired by Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc. in 2010 for Rs.3,260 crore. ...Patel set up Vini with an initial capital of Rs.70 crore. In the year ended March, Vini clocked sales of Rs.350 crore. “We will be crossing Rs.480 crore by the end of this year—doing in four years what Paras took two decades to do,” said Patel. ...Private equity firms have also been attracted to Vini. Although Patel didn’t need the money, Sequoia pursued him, investing in his ability to create more brands. “We had seen his work in Paras and looking at some of the numbers that Vini achieved in the first year of operation, we decided to invest,” Sequoia’s Pandey said. Venture Inte

Elementia Wellness Pvt. Ltd, the company that owns the Tattva spa chain, has raised funding from the Indian Angel Network (IAN). The funds will be used to expand the company’s network, development of the regional teams in tier two and three cities. The company will also look to strengthen its technological capabilities to further build up processes for enhanced consumer experience and faster scale-up.  Founded by Aditya Kaushal, Anita Kaushal, Karan Goyal and Shipra Sharma, Delhi-based Tattva Spa offers customized offerings to the wellness (spa) needs of leisure and business hotels across mid-scale, luxury, heritage, upscale and contemporary hotels categories.  Source: Mint   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 Exha

Matrix Partners India has invested in the first institutional round of funding for GrownOut , a referral hiring solution that enables companies to leverage their employees’ professional network. GrownOut will use the funds for deepening its analytics expertise, product development and growing its business. GrownOut has been deployed at several leading companies including Quikr, Ola, Appiterate, Stayzilla and Winshuttle amongst others. GrownOut was the first seed investment by Outbox Ventures  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.

Chennai-based Hyperverge has raised $550,000 (Rs 3.5 crore) from a clutch of US-based investors, including New Enterprise Associates. Founded by Kedar Kulkarni and incubated at IIT-Madras, Hyperverge is preparing for the commercial launch of its image-recognition product. 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 Transactions Newsletter.

Flinto, a maker of educational activity kits for children, has raised $ 300,000 from a consortium of investors led by GSF to expand marketing and operations. The other investors include Globevestor, a global online venture capital platform based in San Mateo in California, Asian Ecommerce Alliance GmBH and People Group, which runs Shaadi.com.  The Chennai-based company's product called Flintobox is a theme-based activity box for 3-7 year old children, addressing cognitive, motor, creative, social and language skills. Every month, a fresh activity box is created with a new theme and sent to subscribers. Flinto, founded last year, started with 50 subscriptions for its boxes and now ships 1,500 boxes to 230 locations in India. 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 product