The Venture Intelligence Blog

Stellaris Venture Partners $300 million Fund III   has attracted significant attention in the ecosystem - including for its size and the speed with which it was raised. The three original partners of Stellaris - Ritesh Banglani, Alok Goyal and Rahul Chowdhri - have recently shared details of the fund raise, via two different podcasts. While Ritesh and Alok spoke on the Neon Show , while Rahul appeared on Prime Venture Partners' podcast  (along with Gautam Mago of A91 Partners). The newest partner at Stellaris, Naman Lahoty, had also joined Stellaris' founders in an Yourstory Podcast  where they covered broader startup ecosystem related topics (than just the fund raise).  Stellaris has meanwhile launched its own podcast (but naturally?) - where, as part of the first episode , Rahul Chowdhri, has interviewed Kirti Varun Avasarala (a senior product executive at Meesho  and Flipkart, who has since moved to Uber). All well worth a watch / listen - especially fo...

An article by Institutional Investor  covers an EY's 2019 Global Alternative Fund Survey on institutional investors moving allocation from Hedge Funds to Private Equity. Snapshots from the article are below: In 2019, hedge funds made up 33 percent of institutional investors’ allocations to alternatives. That’s a 7 percentage point drop from 2018, according to EY’s 2019 global alternative fund survey released Wednesday. Private equity was the big winner, growing to 25 percent of investors’ alternatives bet from 18 percent the year before, EY reported. Alternatives as a whole made up a quarter of investors’ portfolios, up slightly from 24 percent last year. We’ve seen that hedge fund offerings have been challenged on a number of fronts. Your long-only and long-short equity managers are continuing to face pressure from ETFs and institutional investors that can do that on their own, Ryan Munson, a partner in EY’s asset and wealth management practice and an author of the repo...

It is well know from experience in the US, Venture Capital funds depend on 1-3 "super hits" in their portfolios to generate most of their returns. In India, this phenomenon started to play out with Redbus - whose $100 million+ sale  to Naspers in 2014 - generated more returns for Seedfund than the size of the firm's fund.  Of course, in 2015, the mega valuation spikes for horizontal E-Commerce Unicorns - Flipkart and Snapdeal - made the fortunes of their respective earliest investors: Accel India and Kalaari Capital (formerly IndoUS Ventures). In Sep-09, Kalaari Capital had invested $2.25 M (INR 10 Cr) in Snapdeal for a 40% stake valuing the company at $5.6 M (INR 25 Cr). In Feb-2015, Kalaari Capital made a partial exit worth $60 million with a 11x return (when Softbank invested in the company at $1.6 Billion valuation). At Snapdeal's $5.5 Billion valuation in 2015, Kalaari's stake - including the realized and unrealized portion - would fetch the firm a ret...

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Anubha Shrivastava, Managing Director (Asia), CDC - one of the oldest investors in Indian PE/VC Funds - highlights the problems facing the industry in a Business Standard article . The twist in the tale is that many investors have generated single-digit net returns from the India portfolio. The 2004, 2005 and 2006 vintages that should have delivered outstanding returns have, in fact, had patchy returns at best. While funds have gone on to raise their second and even third funds, investors and returns are languishing. The root of this problem lies in the fact that the understanding between PE and the businesses was set incorrectly in 2004. PE was regarded by businesses as just another source of financing, alongside the public markets and bank debt. The PE industry did not correct this understanding. With capital rushing into PE in India and immature teams being set up to capitalise on the capital flow, a number of mistakes have been made by an immature start-up industry. The...

Sunil Gottipati is a Principal with Princeton University Investment Company (Princo), the agency responsible for the management of Princeton University’s over $14 billion endowment. Venture Intelligence recently spoke to Gottipati who is active in managing the endowment’s allocations to Private Equity, including in emerging markets like India and China. This interview first appeared in the latest issue of the Venture Intelligence India Private Equity Roundup Quarterly Report . Venture Intelligence: Can you give us an overview of Princo’s investments in Indian Private Equity/Venture Capital funds? Sunil Gottipati: It is important to highlight that the investment approach at Princo is predominantly bottom-up. While we have articulated a goal of increasing the percentage of the endowment that is invested in markets outside the US, implementation of this goal is dependent on us finding high-quality “foreign local” managers based outside the US, a task that is often challenging. We maintain...

Venture Intelligence recently spoke to Johanna L. Klein, Investment Officer, Capital Markets and Financial Sectors Division of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), who is active in the multilateral development financial institution’s investments into private equity funds across Asian emerging markets. Venture Intelligence: What is ADB’s outlook on new Private Equity fund investments in India? Johanna Klein: Our starting point is that, as a development bank, we should always have some clear value addition in the role we play in private equity. Starting several years ago, there began to be a lot of money from commercial sources going into generic Indian PE funds, so we cut down our investing in sector-agnostic funds and started focusing on niche type funds. Subsequent to that, most of what we have invested in India has been in clean energy and cleantech type of funds. Going forward, apart from cleantech, we will look at the healthcare sector, the education sector, and other “bottom of the...

Paresh Thakker, Head-Group M&A and MD-Global Asset Management, Religare In 2010, the Delhi-headquartered Religare Enterprises Group acquired significant stakes in two US-based fund-of-fund houses to jumpstart its goal of building a Multi-Boutique Global Asset Management Platform. In February, Religare announced acquisition of controlling stake in Northgate Capital, a PE fund of funds which manages approximately $3 billion on behalf of more than 400 prominent institutional and high net worth families and individuals. In December, Religare announced signing of deal entailing acquisition of majority stake in Landmark Partners, a PE and Real Estate fund-of-funds focused on secondary transactions. Landmark manages ~$8.3 billion of assets. Overall, Religare is aiming to acquire/partner with 8-10 affiliates/asset management companies over the next 3 years targeting an assets under management of $100 billion. Venture Intelligence recently spoke to Paresh Thakker, who is responsible for l...

Founded in early 2006, Asia Alternatives is an Asia-focused Private Equity Fund of funds. Asia Alternatives recently raised a $950 million second fund (as a successor to its $515 million first fund). Venture Intelligence recently spoke to Rebecca Xu, a Co-Founder and Managing Director who co-leads Asia Alternatives’ Hong Kong office, and Praneet Garg, Investment Associate who is responsible for the firm's fund investments and direct co-investments in India. Extracts from the interview, the full version of which is published in the Q1 '09 V enture Intelligence Roundup report . Q: When do you expect the PE deal making activity to recover? Rebecca Xu: Investing pace has slowed down in every market in Asia. There are currently a lot of uncertainties in the overall economies and the PE markets, causing our GPs to be extremely cautious in deal making. Public market valuations have come down significantly but private market valuation correction is still lagging in some markets. Our G...