The Venture Intelligence Blog

TiE Bangalore has put together the Entrepreneur Accelerator Program (TiE-EAP or “tie-up”). TiE-EAP is designed to help companies get through the seed-stage of evolution and graduate to first round of funding from venture capital firms. The program brings together an ecosystem of early stage investors and mentors, as well as an array of support service providers such as incubation centers, legal and accounting services and recruitment services – and connects them with pre-screened and motivated entrepreneurs. To begin with, TiE – EAP intends to select between three and five entrepreneurs to actively assist through this program and is inviting 2-3 page business plan summaries from interested entrepreneurs and startups. For more information, visit http://tiebangalore.org/eap_home.html or contact Nishant Malhotra at eap-coordinator@tiebangalore.org Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence India, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies world...

Anand Sridharan of Bessemer Venture Partners has triggered off an interesting debate on his blog on when the Indian Internet market will really take off. At $25-30 million ad revenues and $150-200 million e-commerce revenues (gross), the India internet market is clearly a small market today. There is also no doubt on the direction and that this would eventually become significant. The main question is ‘how soon’? I don’t have the answer, but here are my views on some of the relevant factors and on what needs to change for us to get there. Let me start with my definition for ‘significant scale’. My medium-term target would be 30 million households having high quality (over 256 kbps), affordable ( under Rs. 500/month for PC-EMI + net access without download limitations), reliable internet access at home. I deliberately pick 30 million, as that is the number of households who’ll earn over Rs. 0.2 million/year in the 2010 timeframe. Arun Natarajan is the Founder of Venture Intelligence In...

Business Today has a detailed series of articles on the Indian automobile industry, including its various segments like cars, two-wheelers, trucks, auto components and auto engineering. 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.

Brad Feld of Mobius VC heaps praise on the performance of Stratify, Inc. on his blog. It’s always really exciting when a portfolio company hits its inflection point and has a year of extreme growth. All venture backed companies always predict their growth will follow a “hockey stick curve”. This of course is the exception, not the norm, for the vast majority of startups. Stratify had its hockey stick in 2005 – by the end of the year we’d had over 400% growth off of a multi-million dollar base revenue from 2004. While it’s easy to sit back and be delighted (or even a little stunned), there is no end in sight, which is a tribute to Ramana Venkata and his awesome team. Stratify was founded in 1999 - as Purple Yogi - by former Intel Corp. scientists, Ramana Venkata and Ramesh Subramonian, along with Rakesh Mathur (former co-founder of web database firm Junglee). In 2001, the company changed its business model (from selling to consumers) to selling its software as a service to enterp...

Angel investor Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures has been named No. 3 on Forbes magazine's annual Midas List of technology industry investors. Here is what the magazine had to say in its profile of the 49-year-old Shriram: Joined the Google board at its creation. At last count had 2.8 million shares, worth quite a bit . Made his bones in mid-1990s at Netscape. "It died an early death but spawned other great companies." Ran shopbot Junglee, sold it to Amazon for $200 million. Stayed a year, later advised or invested in several firms run by Netscapees (Tellme, Elance). New deals include Zazzle, which prints custom graphics, and PodShow, which broadcasts music. 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.

While both foreign and domestic Private Equity firms are rushing to launch Real Estate funds, observers have predicted that PE investors will face serious challenges in dealing with corporate governance related issues in this industry. A recent Businessworld column suggests that PE firms are willing to make compromises and live with workarounds. Builders may be nonchalant about walking around with suitcases bulging with unaccounted-for cash, but it might not be easy for say, an American private equity investor, unfamiliar with the Indian black economy, to do this. If a recent meeting between a foreign private equity player and a builder in Mumbai recently was any indication, the investors are planning to look the other way. The way it will work is this: the builder is the one who does the dirty work of buying the land and handing over bags of cash. He will set up a company which will actually own the land. Shares in the company will be sold to the foreign investor at a premium. This ...

Jeff Bussgang has a great post on how entrepreneurs envy VCs, how VCs envy their Private Equity cousins who, in turn, envy hedge fund managers. Is there anyone that the hedge fund folks envy? Yes, says Bussgang: Entrepreneurs! I often hear them (hedge fund executives) discuss with envy the life of the entrepreneur – cycling through exciting new start-ups every 5-6 years and then taking long sabbaticals in-between gigs. Meanwhile, the hedge fund executive is chained to every international market every minute of the day for fear they miss spotting the latest currency or interest rate fluctuation. Entrepreneurs actually create things of value and leave a mark on society, rather than simply financial engineering. And that nonsense about money flowing in so fast being such a great thing? Remember, it can flow out just as fast. And, besides, the hedge fund business as a whole has little barriers to entry and struggle to find true proprietary elements of the busines, resulting in too muc...