The Venture Intelligence Blog

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.

Will SPACs emerge as an Alternative Exit Route? After 10 years of raising over $100 million from Private Equity & Venture Capital Investors, Yatra.com is to now get listed on NASDAQ through a merger with Terrapin 3 - which basically does "nothing", other than being listed on NASDAQ that is. What is Terrapin 3? Terrapin 3 is a "SPAC" (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) or a "Blank Check" company, which according to the US SEC , "..has indicated its business plan is to engage in a merger or acquisition with an unidentified company or companies (within a set time frame)." A SPAC is one where investors' are betting on the jockey (i.e. the management) and not the horse (because there is no horse). * Terrapin 3 is founded by Nathan Leight,(who has successfully created two previous blank-check companies) and sponsored by Terrapin Partners and Macquarie Group. Terrapin 3 raised over $212 Million via a IPO in July 2014. Ter...

An article by the New Indian Express , uses Venture Intelligence data to track investments by Tiger Global in Carat Lane: In all, Tiger Global had invested $50 million in the four rounds. In the latest round, in January, 2015, Caratlane raised $30 million or Rs 185 crore at a valuation of Rs 710 crore for a 26 per cent stake, according to data from Venture Intelligence . Titan may pay a premium for the stake or could be at the same valuation at which Tiger Global invested in Caratlane, sources said. Here is a snapshot of the the First round investment by Tiger Global in Carat Lane from the Venture Intelligence Deals Database : If you are a subscriber, Click here to login, and click on the below links to view the other rounds of investment in the company, its financials, valuations, transaction multiple etc: Tiger Global - Mar 2012 Investment Tiger Global - Aug 2013 Investment Tiger Global - Jan 2015 Investment Carat Lane Latest Financial Numbers If you...

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Private Equity exits in India for Q1 2016 amounted to  $2.5 billion  (including value of stock swap transactions) an increase of 129% compared to $1.94 billion in the Q1 2015, according to latest Venture Intelligence Private Equity Exits Report. Of the total exit value in Q1’16, $2 billion represented complete exits; the remainder being partial ones. Highlights 7 exits of over $100 million in value account for 82.28% of the value pie KKR sells its stake in Alliance Tire Group for $1.05 Billion to Yokohama Rubber Co Strategic Sale exits at $1.3 Billion account for 37% of total exits followed by Public Market Sale and Secondary sale with 29% each The largest PE exit announced (in value terms) during the year was the stake sale worth $1.05 billion of Alliance Tire Group by KKR to Yokohama Rubber Co. KKR realized approx. 2.8x return on its three year old investment. The next largest was the exit by Advent International from Care Hospitals via a sale to Abraaj...

Economic Times has an infographic based on Venture Intelligence data on the phenomenon of VC-backed startups acquiring their peers. The Venture Intelligence infographic on the same phenomenon: 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 Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

h 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 Sign Up for the FREE Weekly Edition of the Deal Digest: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

JustDial IPO fetches over 10x return for SAIF; TPG exits Shriram Transport Finance with over 6x Private Equity firms obtained exit routes for their investments in 29 Indian companies during Q2 ’13 up 38% over the 21 exits in the same period a year ago (and 21% over the 24 exits in the immediate previous quarter), according to data from Venture Intelligence (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a research service focused on private company financials, transactions and valuations in India. Of the divestitures during the latest quarter, 21 represented complete exits; the remainder partial ones. Sale of shares in already listed companies (via the public markets) accounted for nine exits during Apr-Jun ’13 (compared to four in the same period in 2012); Strategic Acquisitions for seven (vs. six in Q2’12); Secondary Sales (i.e., purchases of shares held by one PE firm by another) for six (vs. seven in Q2’12) and Buybacks for six (vs. four in Q2’12). Note: The above figures do not include exi...

As part of his speech at the Venture Intelligence APEX'13 Awards, Ashish Chauhan, CEO, Bombay Stock Exchange, described how PE/VC investors were like the mythological character Abhimanyu  who knew "how to enter (the Chakra Vyuh ), but not to exit". He suggested that they could, at time of their investment into an SME company, insist the company list on the BSE's SME Stock Exchange. "Then, you can create an exit (route) at the time of the entry itself," Mr.Chauhan said. The added benefit is that the various governance related provisions that investors desire - from declaration of financial results, etc - is ensured by the exchange and enforced by SEBI and other regulatory agencies. "Protection of minority rights - i.e., ensuring corporate democracy - is the primary job of the exchange. If the majority owner takes away most of the profits and shares only the losses with the minority, then the faith in the public markets will collapse,”...

A new Grant Thornton report titled “ Global Private Equity Report 2012 " says "India is the most challenging market globally for this sector". Extracts from the Grant Thornton press release on the report : On the Fundraising Outlook The most dramatic decline in optimism from 2011 is evident in the BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This year, 78 percent of respondents in these markets described the fundraising outlook as “negative” or “very negative”. In 2011, the figure was 39 percent. On Cross-Border Buyers ...Globally, China and Japan, Europe and North America are the regions from which most GPs expect non-domestic strategic buyers to originate. Regions as expected sources of non-domestic acquirers China, Japan, Korea 31% Europe 24% North America 22% South East Asia 11% India 10% MENA 1% Africa Less than 1% Latin America L...

The Venture Intelligence APEX Awards event is a unique gathering of top executives in the Indian Deal ecosystem including from Limited Partners, PE/VC firms, Investment Banks, Consultants, Corporate Law firms, HR firms etc. The event features a High Power PE/VC industry panel that reflects on the recent trends and the challenges that lie ahead from a dealmaker's perspective.This year's LP-GP Panel, chaired by A V Seshadrinathan, Managing Director of Basiz Fund Services , was titled "Can PE become PSPD?" and focused on how Indian PE managers can build their firms for sustainable success. (L-R) Sesh A.V. of Basiz Fund Services, Vishal Tulsyan of Motilal Oswal Private Equity, Paresh Thakker of Religare, Anand RP of Squadron Capital, Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners India More about the topic: Infosys became the darling of investors with Narayana Murthy’s famous Predictability-Sustainability-Profitability-De-risking (PSPD) ...

Private Equity firms invested $10,117 million over 441 deals in India during the 12 months ending December 2011, compared to $8,187 million across 362 deals during the previous year, according to analysis by Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A activity. These figures - which include VC investments and exclude PE investments in Real Estate - take the total investments by PE firms over the past five years to about $47 billion across 2,062 transactions. The latest Venture Intelligence data however reveals that PE investments in October-December 2011 declined to about $1,456 million (across 105 deals) compared to the $1,828 million invested (across 88 deals) in the same period in 2010 and $2,334 million invested (across 109 deals) in the immediate previous quarter. “The amount of PE capital deployed has declined for the fourth successive quarter in keeping with the economic uncertainty and the decline in public markets,” noted Arun Natarajan, CEO...

In an interview published in The Mint (in text and video formats), Vikram Utamsingh, Partner - Transactions and Restructuring & Private Equity Advisory, KPMG India, says that while the exit track record of India-dedicated PE funds has not been great in the last few years, things are likely to improve from here. ...results are going to be bad for a couple of years because the industry is holding on to a portfolio of investments and we can assume that at least one-third of them will not make returns. So what are investors going to do with these investments? Ultimately, investors will have to exit them, write them off, or something. I think the industry will continue to see some bad news, for a couple of years. Hopefully, the next 12 months are going to be a very good period for PE investments. To begin with, we have a stock market which is not very vibrant. So, there are a lot of IPOs that are not happening. These companies are now coming to PE firms to raise money. Those firms are ...

Edited excerpts from the Press Release: NYSE-listed Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, has agreed to acquire privately held Gluster, Inc, a leading provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions for standardizing the management of unstructured data , for approximately $136 million in cash. As part of the transaction, Red Hat will also assume unvested Gluster equity outstanding on the closing date and issue certain equity retention incentives. The transaction is expected to close in October, subject to customary closing conditions. With this acquisition, Red Hat will define a new baseline for how enterprise IT manages the explosion of big data, whether deployed on-premise or spanning into the public cloud. Red Hat is expanding into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, enabling it to deliver open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing. Founded in 2005, Gl...

Citrix Systems has acquired Nexus Ventures-backed Cloud.com , an US-based provider of software infrastructure platforms for cloud providers. The company’s CloudStack product line helps providers deploy and manage simple, cost-effective cloud services that are scalable, secure and open. From the Venture Intelligence PE Deal database : Nexus first invested in Cloud.com (then called VMOps) in Aug 2009 and reinvested as part of the $11-M second round funding in May 2010. The other investors in the company included Index Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. The deal represents the third exit by Nexus in the last 12 months Previously, online classifieds website OLX was acquired by Napsters late last year, while Open source Web-conferencing company Dimdim was acquired by Salesforce.com earlier this year. For the detailed press release on the deal, please visit http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=2313930

Highlights from the Venture Intelligence Indian 2010 Annual Private Equity Roundup Report Private Equity firms invested $7,974 million over 325 deals in India during the 12 months ending December 2010, compared to $4,068 million across 290 deals during the previous year, according to analysis by Venture Intelligence, a research service focused on Private Equity and M&A activity. (These figures include VC investments and exclude PE investments in Real Estate.) “After a volatile 3 year period, PE investment activity in 2010 reverts to the levels of 2006 (which had witnessed 358 investments worth $7,485 million),” pointed out Arun Natarajan, CEO of Venture Intelligence. “The really exciting feature of 2010 was on the exits side where activity vaulted to all time high levels with 121 transactions, including 24 via IPOs,” he added. Top Investments The largest investment reported during the year was the $425 million raised by power generation firm Asian Genco from investors including Ge...