The Venture Intelligence Blog

MediaNama, which recently had a roundup of online group buying services in India, has followed it up with an interview with Smile Interactive Group's Harish Bahl. Smile's joint venture firm Deals And You recently acquired group buying startup Wanamo. (This deal closely followed Battery Ventures and Grelock Ventures committing $8.75 million to another Indian group buying service, Taggle.) There’s a lot of VC interest in this space, and that has largely to do with the success of groupon globally; they want to put money behind a working model. If you look at it from an India perspective, it’s a model that is very well suited – there is value for merchants and buyers, and a great marketing platform for services segment in the SME space. Finally, this is performance based marketing, and the Internet consumer in India is a deal seeker. ...The bad news is that this model has very low entry barriers. The good news is that it’s a model that is hard to scale ...GroupOn works on around 5...

Forbes India has a profile of financial services distribution firm NetAmbit, which has raised VC funding from Bessemer Ventures and more recently, Helion Ventures. NetAmbit is the undisputed leader in India at cold-calling anyone and selling them financial products. It is 5-6 times bigger than its nearest competitor in the space, says Tarun Chugh, executive vice-president and head of sales and distribution for ICICI Prudential Life, India’s largest private insurer. ...For the year ended March 2010, NetAmbit sold insurance policies worth Rs. 450 crore, of which new policies accounted for Rs. 200 crore. Girish Batra, 44, its founder and CEO, says this was 12 times what he sold just three years back in 2007, and will become Rs. 800 crore within the next year. His income by way of commission on these sales was Rs. 90 crore which he projects will become Rs. 185 crore by next year. ...“India is a push market, even a product like a personal loan is sold and not bought. We are fine with any n...

At Venture Intelligence, we recently had a great experience interviewing Hemu Ramaiah, founder of the Landmark bookstore chain (in which the Tatas acquired a majority stake in 2005). For me, the interview (which is part our Entrepreneur Podcast series "Entrevista") served as a confirmation that a customer facing role is the best start to an entrepreneurial career. Other key takeaways from the podcast: * “Make Your Own Mistakes” o Trust Your Gut (based on your understanding of customer needs) o “Don’t let Accountants take over your business” o Examples: Deciding to get software designed by a start-up firm (which made the effort to understand her requirements better), deciding not to charge extra for courier delivery for Internet orders, deciding to buy (rather than rent) space for the stores, etc. * Importance of Growing the Market vs. worrying overly about competition o Amazing story of how she decides overnight to start supplying books to he...

Edited excerpts from the Press Release: Mayfield India Fund has made an investment of Rs 40 crores in higher education firm Centum Learning Ltd, a Bharti Group firm. Mayfield's Vikram Godse would be joining Centum's board of directors. Centum has set up more than 130 vocational education centres in 90 cities across India. It has now launched another initiative - Centum U - Institute of Management & Creative Studies, which offers various undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Mohali and Hyderabad. Besides this, Centum Learning is actively engaged with the State Governments to develop globally deployable skilled manpower and enhance employability quotient of both urban and rural youth. For more information on Centum, visit http://www.centumlearning.com/ About Mayfield India Mayfield started investing in India in 2006, and with a dedicated India fund, raised in 2008, has made direct investments in companies like Satya Paul, Geodesic Techniques F...

Chris Douvos has put up an interesting set of slides on how institutional investors view VC funds as an asset class. (Section 4: Whither Venture Capital Allocations? is especially interesting.) Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in

The Deal magazine has a Cover Story on infrastructure investment opportunities in the BRIC countries with a special highlight on India. Of all the emerging markets, India best illustrates the benefits -- and the pitfalls -- of PE investment in infrastructure. It has one of the longest track records and runs neck and neck with China in attracting the most infrastructure-related funds and investments. "There's no better place to be," says 3i's Bagla. ...AMP launched its first Asian infrastructure fund in 1994, as did American International Group Inc., through its asset management arm. AMP pioneered the field in India five years later, starting a modest $40 million fund fashioned in conjunction with Indian mutual funds manager Unit Trust of India, now UTI Mutual Funds. That fund is fully divested. AMP launched a second, $120 million fund in 2004. Britain's 3i started to invest in India in 2005 as part of a global infrastructure fund. It really cranked up participati...

Edited excerpts from the press release: Sohan Lal Commodity Management (SLCM), an agri-commodity logistics and procurement company based in Delhi, has received a Rs 10 crore investment from VC firm Nexus Venture Partners. Sandeep Singhal of Nexus Venture Partners will join the Sohan Lal Commodity Management board. ICICI Bank was the sole advisor to this transaction. SLCM provides comprehensive agri-commodity warehouse management and procurement solutions to farmers, processors, traders, agri-exchanges and government organizations across 70 locations and 12 states in India. Last year the company handled over Rs 5,000Cr of agri-commodities ranging from grains, oilseeds, pulses and spices among others. SLCM works with leading commodity exchanges as their delivery partner across India and provides collateral management for banks for their warehouse receipt based financing products. Speaking about the funding, Mr Sandeep Sabharwal, Founder & CEO, Sohan Lal Commodity Management, said, “...