The Venture Intelligence Blog

Even though Private Equity investment figures in 2015 surpassed the previous high (of 2007), the expert panel at the Venture Intelligence APEX'16 PE-VC Summit felt the PE segment still faces a challenging environment and that "selectivity" will be keyword for such investments in the months ahead. Speakers on the panel included Pradyumna Nag, Director, Prequate (moderator); Arvind Malhan, Partner, New Silk Route ; N.K.Dilip, Partner, Tatva Legal ; Sunil Kolangara, Director, Ascent Capital &  Srini Vudayagiri, Partner, Peepul Capital "The days of playing the Valuation Arbitrage game - of investing in a private company and it taking public at a higher multiple and looking intelligent in the process - are gone. The only scope for such an arbitrage today is to spot a sector early enough," commented Sunil Kolangara, Director, Ascent Capital. "Passive investments are also a thing of the past - PE investors, including those who hold minority stakes, are m...

As Tiger Global and various international investors step on the brake at their investment vehicles, there is one class of investor - Family Offices - that is stepping on the accelerator. Using data from the Venture Intelligence PE/VC Deals Database , we looked at VC deals (including Growth Capital investments of over $20 million in tech startups) over the last twelve months – in two distinct halves. The first half of the Indian fiscal year - April 2015 to September 2015 - things were quite rosy all around and all kinds of international investors - from Hedge Funds (with colorful names) to European & Russian Billionaires - pouring capital into Indian startups. With the next six months witnessing a cooling off in investment activity (at least when compared to the first half of 2015), Venture Intelligence dove into the data to find which class of investors braved ahead and which took their cues from the nervousness flowing in from Silicon Valley. Investment activity of Hedge Fu...

Frankie Brown of Investec has an interesting take on Indian E-Commerce in Economic Times . Extracts: The funding slowdown has revealed as much about the Indian venture capital market as the companies they evaluate. It is a small world of IIT buddies and their gossiping, of egos and posturing, bluff and counter-bluff. Where the fearful see chaos, the wise see opportunity — the market is full of increasingly attractive deals. ...What concerns me is the over-reliance of the market on such a small number of investors. With traditional private equity reluctant to get involved, and offline players choosing to remain wilfully blind, Tiger, Naspers, Soft-Bank and Alibaba have run riot, waving magic wands and making princes and paupers of those they select and jettison. There remains a concern that in the world of “bigger is better,” inefficiencies are creeping into the market. ...Valuations are a matter of conjecture, but what is happening on the ground is indisputable. The seismic shif...

Economic Times has an article on e-jeweler CaratLane's as part of which it uses Venture Intelligence's data to check on the valuation of the company and its peers. Easily the top-funded estore for jewellery, CaratLane has raised well over Rs 300 crore ($50 million) since 2011, predominantly from Tiger Global Management, which is invested in Indian top start-ups Flipkart and Ola. CaratLane's latest fund-raiser, announced in January 2015, was Rs 185 crore ($30 million) at a valuation of Rs 712 crore and a revenue multiple of nine times, according to data provided by investment tracking firm Venture Intelligence. Among the other top fund-raisers, Bengaluru-based BlueStone raised Rs 100 crore, last year at a valuation of nearly Rs 373 crore.  Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to Sign Up fo...

Mint has extracted a list of 14 VCs of Indian origin in the US who made it to CB Insights' Top 100 VC . There are 5 more desi names on the CB list (not sure which one Mint has excluded): 80 Samir Kaul Khosla Ventures 91 Satish Dharmaraj Redpoint Ventures 92 Venky Ganesan Menlo Ventures 93 Ravi Mhatre Lightspeed Venture Partners 97 Jani.Amish Amish Jani FirstMark Capital While Vinod Khosla (probably the best known VC of Indian origin of all time) himself is not on the CB list, two folks from Khosla Ventures - a fund he founded and leads - are. Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

There's more free advice in the air for TinyOwl. Business Standard has an article listing the "6 Mistakes" of the troubled food delivery start-up TinyOwl. The six mistakes, according to BS,  included "firing 300 employees after over-hiring (in Sep15)"; making more lay-off close to Diwali; in-effective pivots; a (costly) CTO hire and closing the Homemade division (that was doing relatively well). The BS article has led to TinyOwl trending again on Twitter - including on its non-auspicious choice of name , VC bashing and even a NDA vs. UPA angle. Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Part 2 (snapshots from the panel on making Startup Ecosystem sustainable): Speakers on the panel - moderated  by Chandra Srikanth, Chief Correspondent & Anchor, ET Now   - included in this segment: K. Ganesh, Co-Founder, GrowthStory Ben Mathias, MD & India Head, Vertex Ventures Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner & CIO, Exfinity Ventures Aroon Raman, Managing Director, Telos Investments   Avinash Luthria, Principal, responsAbility Suhail Nathani, Partner, Economic Laws Practice Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Part 1 (snapshots from the panel on making Startup Ecosystem sustainable): Speakers on the panel included in this segment: K. Ganesh, Co-Founder, GrowthStory Ben Mathias, MD & India Head, Vertex Ventures Shailesh Ghorpade, Managing Partner & CIO, Exfinity Ventures Aroon Raman, Managing Director, Telos Investments   Venture Intelligence is India's longest serving provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations in India. Click Here to Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Kashyap Deorah, author of "The Golden Tap: The Inside Story of Hyper-Funded Indian Startups" and the former President of the Future Group's aborted e-commerce venture Futurebazaar.com, seems to be having a good time amidst Flipkart's key investor Tiger Global buying into rival Amazon and the recent write down of its valuation by another investor, Morgan Stanley.  Extracts from his latest column in Mint : ...this is the beginning of a slide that will continue until Flipkart’s valuation equals invested capital, currently $3.2 billion.  ...With 200-250% revenue growth and 20-40% operating losses, even at a reduced $11 billion, a multiple of 3-5x seems high. ...Now let us look at the funding scenario. Tiger Global Management bought over $1 billion of Amazon shares a quarter ago. Since June 2015, Amazon has grown by 50% in market capitalization, while JD.com and now Flipkart are down 30%. Amazon has the luxury of free cash flow, as is the outcome of a true e-commerc...