The Venture Intelligence Blog

Ernst & Young is the Most Active Advisor inclusive of due diligence & other services Continuing its strong run from the previous year, Unitus Capital topped the Venture Intelligence League Tables for Most Active Transaction Advisor (Private Equity) during the first six months of 2014. The firm acted as financial advisor to eight qualifying PE investments during the period (notching up 32 points). Among the transactions advised by Unitus were the $13-M investment by Fidelity Growth Partners and existing investor Aavishkaar in dairy firm Milk Mantra and Norwegian Microfinance Initiative’s investment in microfinance firm Satin Creditcare Network . The Venture Intelligence League Tables, the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on volume of PE and M&A transactions (combined with credits based on fulfillment of criteria) advised by Transaction and Legal Advisory firms. Ernst & Young, with seven deals (28 p...

Cross posted from the Entrevista Blog Interview with Ganapathy Subramaniam, Founding-CEO of Bangalore-based semiconductor tech company Cosmic Circuits. (Cosmic was acquired in early 2013 by Silicon Valley-based, Nasdaq-listed electronic design giant Cadence.) The interviewer is fellow entrepreneur Chandu Nair. The Podcast can be downloaded from here . (Use Right Click > Save As to save the file to your desktop) Highlights Reading the Wind How Ganapathy, as part of visiting customers in October 2012, realized that Cosmic Circuits could no longer remain an independent company. (Its customers and partners wanted a strong Number 2 player in the segment to provide a balance to the Number 1 player, Synopsis.)  Making the company Due Diligence ready How Cosmic's decisions to rope in a Big 4 audit firm (just five years into its existence) and go in for an ISO certification, stood it in good stead when it came to due diligence at the time of its acquisition. ...

Manish Sabharwal, founder of education and staffing services firm Teamlease (who earlier founded and sold India Life) articulates in an article in Mint, how he went about choosing his latest set of PE/VC Investors. Sabharwal and Reddy decided to raise Rs. 100 crore to start with. But since both labour and education are highly regulated, Sabharwal was cautious about finding the right financier. “We wanted a domestic investor because they understand India. We didn’t want a tourist investor from the US who would give us a high valuation but freak out every time an article appeared in the newspaper,” he says. Sabharwal spoke to 5-10 investors. “I did my due diligence, about the personalities in the investing firm, talked to people at their investee companies, and other companies that they had dealings with. I tried to get a match of how long we think it’s going to take and how long they are going to give us.” Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on private eq...

Corporate law firm AZB & Partners has topped the Venture Intelligence India League Tables for 2010 as the Most Active Legal Advisor for both Private Equity and M&A deals. AZB advised a total of 90 transactions during the period. Ernst & Young – which advised a total of 34 qualifying transactions - topped the League Tables as the Most Active Transaction Advisor (both PE and M&A) for the year. The Venture Intelligence League Tables, the first such initiative exclusively tracking transactions involving India-based companies, are based on volume of PE and M&A transactions advised by Transaction and Legal Advisory firms. Private Equity Deals Among PE transactions, AZB advised 43 deals worth over $2.2 billion during 2010 including SBI-Macquarie’s $304 million investment in Viom Networks; the $217 million investment by Standard Chartered PE, KKR and New Silk Route in Coffee Day Resorts; and the $175 million investment by Temasek into National Stock Exchange. Other legal ad...