The Venture Intelligence Blog

“We were the first fund to invest in e-commerce trading platforms in India. We don’t think all the companies funded are bad. However, now many ‘me too’ kind of companies are coming up. We believe there is not much room for new e-commerce companies to come and exist...There are opportunities for the existing e-commerce companies to scale up and they may attract investments from some of the later-stage VCs. But we are not planning to seed-fund any new firm. Now, there are talks of consolidation and acquisition between portfolio companies and other e-commerce companies” - Prashanth Prakash, Partner, Accel Partners in an interview to Business Standard. On a related note, Nasscom's Emerge Forum has a series of posts on e-commerce in India. One of the lesser known factors behind e-commerce growth has been the increased adoption of online buying model by smaller cities. With 30 million active Internet users in these cities, the contribution to e-commerce sales in India is estimated to...

From the Press Release: Serendipity Infolabs Pvt. Ltd., which runs the online taxi booking site TaxiForSure.com, has raised venture capital funding from Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. As part of the transaction Anand Daniel of Accel and Ritesh Banglani of Helion have joined the board of the company. TaxiForSure.com was founded by IIM Ahmedabad graduates Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna in June 2011. As frequent business travelers, both co-founders used to find it extremely difficult to book taxis, and even after booking there was no guarantee the cabs would arrive at the right time and place. Co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna said, “On researching the market we found that on the one hand consumers struggle to find taxis reliably, and on the other taxi operators and drivers struggle to get enough customers every day. We realized that technology can play an effective matchmaker in this market”. Anand Daniel of Accel Partners said, "As a consumer I ...

From the Press Release: Accel Partners has completed Series A investment in Trivone Digital a Bangalore-based new age digital media and content company. The funds will be utilised by Trivone towards meeting its working capital requirements as well as pushing growth through the inorganic route in the months ahead. “We are delighted to have Accel Partners on board and look forward to working closely with them as we chart out a growth path for ourselves. We believe that the expertise gathered by Accel Partners over 25 years of building more than 300 successful enterprises will hold us in good stead,” said Subu Subramanyan, Founder and CEO of Trivone Digital Services. Trivone’s strategy is the ability to create world class content, which will enable it to build Digital media properties and offer managed services to clients. Currently the company offers services by way of creating, sourcing and packaging content for online delivery to a wide cross-section of large Enterprise customers. “Tri...

Among corporate law firms, AZB & Partners topped the Venture Intelligence League Tables as the Most Active Legal Advisor (for both Private Equity and M&A transactions) in 2010. Behram Vakil of AZB & Partners receiving the Most Active Legal Advisor - 2010 Award Mayank Rastogi of Ernst & Young receiving the Most Active Transaction Advisor - 2010 Award The Venture Intelligence APEX Awards are the first awards of its kind for Private Equity & Venture Capital funds in India as well as related advisory firms. The Most Active Advisor Awards are awarded to the toppers of the Venture Intelligence League Tables for the corresponding year. The League Tables ( http://www.ventureintelligence.in/league.htm ) are based on the volume of PE and M&A transactions advised by the Transaction Advisory and Legal Advisory firms during the calendar year. To view more pictures from APEX'11 Awards, Click Here To view videos of the PE/VC Awards, Click Here A more detailed Event Summar...

Extracts from the interview with Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel Partners India that appeared in the GIVCA-Venture Intelligence India Venture Capital Report-2009 (that provides a synopsis of VC investments during the year). Subrata earlier co-founded early stage-focused VC firm Erasmic Venture Fund, which merged with Silicon Valley VC firm Accel Partners in mid-2008. Accel is among the handful of funds in India that are truly early-stage focused and was an active investor in 2009, especially in the Internet/Online Services sector. Venture Intelligence: Has your team’s overall philosophy of investments changed since the merger of Erasmic with Accel? What are the other changes now that you are Accel India? Subrata Mitra: Clearly, we’re managing a bigger fund now than at Erasmic. That does mean our investment range has moved to at least 3-4 times for the better companies. It has changed our thinking somewhat in terms of types and stages of deals we would like to do. VI: What attracted y...