The Venture Intelligence Blog

Today's DNA has an article quoting VCs like Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners and Ashish Gupta of Helion VC - who were earlier Internet entrepreneurs themselves - saying how they were finding more interesting companies to fund outside of these sectors. "If I were to look back, and observe what has happened in the past one year, I think internet and mobile have been disappointing in terms of current opportunities. We still haven't seen enough of promising, innovative, made-for-India kind of start-ups," says Bajaj. He adds that when they started out, he would have expected to do 4-5 deals by now in internet and mobile VAS, as opposed to the two he has made. ..."Across the board, most VC funds have at least a couple of investments in the internet and mobile space. But the rate at which these investments have taken place has been slower than what everyone had made it out to be. It has not lived up to the hype or caught fire very quickly," said Ashish Gupta, MD, He...

The Mint has a profile of Virgin Comics Llc., a company co-founded by former MTV executive Sharad Devarajan and Gotham Chopra (and backed by author Deepak Chopra, filmaker Shekhar Kapur and Virgin Group’s Richard Branson), which is aiming to take Indian culture overseas via the comics route. ACK (Amar Chitra Katha) books are popular with the Indian diaspora, but Virgin’s model is different—the company wants to make its comics, with Indian characters and others, successful in the US, the biggest market for English language comics in the world. ...And Virgin Comics’ revenues from these top sellers has been more than $600 million (Rs2,460 crore) for the 12 months of data available on ICv2 (it arrives at this number based on sales of these comics by Diamond US, a company that has had an exclusive distribution agreement with Virgin since January). More than half of those revenues came from the Devi, Snakewoman and Ramayan 3392 AD series. Devarajan would not disclose the closely-held compan...

Randall L. Stephenson, Chairman & CEO of AT&T Inc., in an interview to Business Today: People keep missing this market. They keep evaluating the market using old traditional ways of valuing the cellular business. We come from the us and in the western culture and we are accustomed to these $30 (Rs 1,230), $40 (Rs 1,640), $50 (Rs 2,050) revenue per subscriber numbers. Who would have ever thought that you can make money at $8 (Rs 328) or $9 (Rs 369) per subscriber? So, here is a market where I would have never forecasted that companies coming here and are making 30 to 40 per cent profit at $8 revenue per subscriber. The model's very different here. The cost structures are very different here. They are engineering the networks very differently here. I guess what I am suggesting is, looking at the numbers, you've got to look at India differently. This market is about 17 per cent penetrated with wireless. So, can you penetrate the rest? I suspect you probably can. But you ...

Business Today has an interesting article on Indian horticulture firms find it more attractive to grow in this African country. For Dr Reddy, it was a journey from red tape to red carpet. He recalls: "Like most people, I had certain notions about the country (Ethiopia). To my pleasant surprise, when I landed there, not only did government officials receive me personally, they also got all the required permissions for us to operate within six days. Imagine, all the paper work was done in six days and no corruption." ... Sample the largesse: all floriculture activities in Ethiopia are granted a 5-8 year tax holiday depending on the quantum of investment and people employed. Under a European Union (EU) grant, the Ethiopian government provides up to 70 per cent of the project cost as a loan at a mere 7.5 per cent. lso, freight costs are half of that from India and the EU allows flowers from Ethiopia to be imported at zero duties under the Lome Convention of Preferential Exports,...

Business Standard columnist Key Sarkar has an interesting piece on the experience of funds like Bellwether, Unitus and Lok Capital which fund microfinance companies. One of the big realisations Bellwether had, according to Prasad, was that transforming NGOs into for-profit MFIs is hugely time-consuming. While the statutory requirements of changing the legal identity have a time cost certainly, what really was more time-consuming than planned was bringing about the change in attitude. Transforming accounting systems and human resource management in existing NGOs actually took 70 to 80 per cent of the time earmarked for these companies. What came as a very pleasant surprise and was an absolute delight, according to Prasad, was the quality of people promoting MFI start-ups. The fact that people with valuable corporate experience are setting up MFIs is a trend unique to India. ...Mehta says that from his deals in the pipeline and the proposals that they get, it may be that MFIs working ...

The following companies are seeking capital for starting-up / expanding their operations: 07-08-15-1: Vadodara-based civil engineering firm seeks $1-5 M for setting up a factory to produce products used in construction industry. 07-08-15-2: New Delhi-based events listing portal seeks 07-08-15-3: Bhopal-based manufacturer of empty hard capsules for pharmaceuticals seeks to sell out for 07-08-15-4: Agra-based online retailer of educational books seeks 07-08-15-5: Mumbai-based Flower Bouquets retailer seeks $1-5 M for establishing support infrastructure (including a call center) and national expansion. For more information about any of these companies, investors - who are subscribers to the Venture Intelligence service - can email the company code to vcmarket@ventureintelligence.in . To learn about our subscription services for investors, please visit our web site . Are you an entrepreneur seeking capital? List your company in the Venture Intelligence VC Market using the form here

The following companies are seeking capital for starting-up / expanding their operations: 07-08-08-1: New Delhi-based 12-year-old corporate travel and event management company, with 34 people and turnover of Rs.8 crore, is looking to sell out. 07-08-08-2: Bangalore-based relocation management company seeks 07-08-08-3: Ajmer-based dealer of surgical equipment seeks 07-08-08-4: Bangalore-based HR Services company seeks 07-08-08-5: Mumbai-based maker of LCD monitors, with a manufacturing facility in Sri Lanka, seeks $1-5 M for expanding its manufacturing base and setting up a R&D center for LCD applications. For more information about any of these companies, investors - who are subscribers to the Venture Intelligence service - can email the company code to vcmarket@ventureintelligence.in . To learn about our subscription services for investors, please visit our web site . Are you an entrepreneur seeking capital? List your company in the Venture Intelligence VC Market using the form he...