The Venture Intelligence Blog

VentureWoods a blog started by entrepreneur-turned-VC Alok Mittal has since turned into a platform with multiple contributors (including yours truly) from the Indian VC-Start-up eco-system. Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence India, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.

Businessworld has a cover story on TCS' growth strategies post its IPO. Here is an extract relating to the acquisition strategy of India' top IT services firm: Apart from HCL Technologies, TCS has been the most systematic player in the M&A game. In December 2001, the company put in place a specialist M&A team that would function as a think-tank on strategic acquisitions both in India and overseas. The team was led by Mahesh Bhandari and Debasis Pottdar, both former M&A specialists with Arthur D. Little and Arthur Anderson respectively. Over the last four years, the M&A think-tank has guided TCS's spree of acquisitions, including the critical consolidation of its BPO holdings. It sold its stake in Intelenet, a joint venture with HDFC, and merged the Tata group's holdings in Airline Financial Services, WTI and Phoenix Global Solutions to create TCS BPO last year. In addition, it has also helped rationalise TCS's various joint ventures across the globe...

Sequoia Capital has decided against partnering WestBridge Capital in their proposed investment into Times Internet which operates the Indiatimes.com portal and e-commerce service, reports Businessworld . It was planned that a consortium of WestBridge Capital Partners and Sequoia Capital will take up 15 per cent of Indiatimes' equity. But the deal did not go through. Now only WestBridge has taken a 2.9 per cent stake. ...Earlier, Indiatimes was keen on the 15 per cent stake sale as it wanted to list directly on the Nasdaq in the US. It reckoned that the experience and network of Goldman Sachs-backed WestBridge and Silicon Valley-based venture fund Sequoia Capital would have been valuable for the company in getting a strong valuation. However, a recent guideline by the finance ministry has undone its plans. The ministry tightened the guidelines for foreign currency convertible bond (FCCB) and global depository receipt (GDR) issues to align them with the Securities and Exchange Board ...

Businessworld profiles Glenmark's early success with its new experimental drug oglemilast meant to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The deal with Forest Labs is worth $190 million (Rs 836 crore) in all, the largest by any Indian drug maker - including the biggies in the swanky campuses. (The largest before this was the $65-million partnership between Ranbaxy and Bayer for the former's extended release version of Bayer's antibiotic Cipro.) Even the deal with Teijin, worth $53 million (Rs 233 crore), is substantial for a company the size of Glenmark. And a third deal is being negotiated with a European partner. ...While the size of the deal is impressive by itself, the circumstances in which it was struck are more striking. Forest came in even before the drug was tested on humans. For Glenmark, it was the first molecule to be licensed. Yet, the deal dwarfs those struck by bigwigs more than twice Glenmark's size. "Forest must have seen someth...

"Plenty of global auto part makers are up for sale. And the money is not hard to find. But there are big risks, and Indian companies need to choose their targets well," says a recent Businessworld cover story. Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence India, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.

Forbes has an article on the new boom in India's textile industry. Some extracts: The industry accounts for 30% of India's exports. China does a much larger dollar volume in textiles, but still the sector accounts for only 18% of China's exports. India, like China, chafed for decades under quotas that limited how much it could send to the U.S. and Europe. In January those quotas were lifted and exports from both countries shot up. In the first five months of this year China's exports of cloth and apparel to the U.S. jumped 54% to $9.9 billion. India's volume was up 29% to $2.3 billion, according to the International Labour Organization, a UN adjunct. ...Last year the Indian government finally cut duties on imported textile machinery. In a further effort to boost the industry's competitiveness, the government this summer announced plans to spend $150 million creating (with private partners) 25 textile parks by 2008--enough for 500,000 new jobs. Each park will cl...

In case you track the Web 2.0 scene/debate (aka by some as "Bubble 2.0"), check this site out. Just refreshing the page will get you new "VC friendly" Web 2.0 company name and business model. Here are a couple of examples it generated for me: Your company name: Seconoorb Your company product: tag-based blogs on the desktop Your company name: Seckoroll Your company product: geotag-based blogs via flash Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence India, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.