The Venture Intelligence Blog

Here's an extract from the Rise Capital Blog : ... the differences between China and India matter just as much as the similarities. We believe that there will be quite a few investors who get “burned” by buying at lofty valuations this time around who subscribe fully to the convenient idea that India is the “next China”, and that Internet companies there are the “____ of India” (fill in the blank with any successful Chinese Internet startup). At Rise, we are eerily reminded of the rush of investment capital that flooded into Brazil a few years ago, with VCs believing that Brazil could also become the “next China”. At one point, the overnight flights from Kennedy (NYC) to Guarulhos (Sao Paolo) were packed with American VCs, startups were getting funded at a breathtaking clip, and early-stage valuations well north of >$100m were not uncommon. So what happened? A dip in the Brazilian economy combined with a realization by VCs that Brazil is actually quite different than China has...

By Arun Natarajan An abridged version of this article appeared in the Business Line dated Jan 13, 2015 Home grown E-Commerce leaders Flipkart and Snapdeal between them raised almost $3 billion from investors during 2014. Powered by the E-Commerce segment, Online Services companies accounted for as much as 37.6% of the total $10.9 billion invested by Private Equity (including Venture Capital) investors during the year, according to figures recently compiled by Venture Intelligence . Startups are clearly back. And how. PE investments in India during 2014 were second only to their historic high of 2007. The year in which Flipkart was founded. At which time the PE investment action in the IT industry was focused almost exclusively on mature IT Services and BPO companies. Unicorn Club Effect What effect will the recent membership to the “Unicorn Club” – i.e., startups with valuations of $1 billion or more – of Flipkart, Snapdeal, etc. have on entrepreneurship in the country? Are w...

Mobile app development software maker AppVirality has raised $465,000 in seed funding from India Internet Group, TNN Capital and other investors including Rajan Anandan, managing director of Google India; Mike Galgon, co-founder of aQuantive; Ravi Gururaj, chair of the Nasscom product council; Baron Capital research analyst Ashim Mehra; InMobi vice president of technology Mohit Saxena. AppVirality provides a software development kit (SDK) and dashboard that allows developers to add growth-hacking techniques to their apps without having to write new code. The company, which took part in Microsoft Accelerator last year, will use the capital for product development and hiring.  Source: TechCrunch    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 view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: In...

The Mint has a detailed profile of the founder of Venture Capital-backed budget hotels aggregator Oravel (now, OyoRooms ) titled "Will the real Ritesh Agarwal please stand up?".  The piece makes the company appear  Facebook like - at least as described in the move The Social Network - full of bad behaviour, co-founder strife, et al. Extracts: A co-founder booted out, employees not given their due and hung out to dry, pieces of paper with informal promises of a stake, a charismatic founder’s attempt to wipe the slate clean, exaggerated pitches, cold and calculated interference of venture capital firms, their sanctimonious contracts and clauses, and the world of make-believe valuations. ...“See, Ritesh is a gifted and talented person. I genuinely believed in his ability and story when he first signed me up as a co-founder,” he said. “But later there was this other side to his personality that surfaced. Many things that happened are unethical and I have lived with th...

Snapdeal founders, Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl have made an investment in Mumbai-based Bewakoof Brands Private Limited, the company behind online apparel portal Bewakoof.com.  Source: Times of India   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 view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Gurgaon - based peer- to-peer lending pioneer Faircent.com has raised capital at an enterprise valuation of $4 million from Devesh Sachdev and Ashish Tiwari, promoters of Fusion Microfinance Pvt Ltd. The money raised would be used for strengthening technology, talent and brand.  Source: Economic Times   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 view our products list including the Free Deal Digest Weekly: India's First & Most Exhaustive Transactions Newsletter.

Bangalore-based Gympik Health Solutions, which owns and operates online marketplace-cum-ecosystem for fitness & wellness service providers Gympik.com, has raised $135,000 (about INR 86 lakh) from healthcare accelerator Healthstart and a group of angel investors including Capvent’s managing partners Tom Clausen and Rohan Ajila, as well as BSE listed manufacturing firm Haldyn Glass. Healthstart’s Pradeep K Jaisingh had joined the board of the company in Feb-14 and Rohan Ajila, Managing Partner, Capvent India joined the board in Sep-14.  The funds will be used for marketing, geographic expansion and for developing new features. It will also be used to enter newer verticals that also involve providing B2B software services to players in the fitness space.  Source: Nextbigwhat   Venture Intelligence is the leading provider of data and analysis on Private Company Financials, Transactions (private equity, venture capital and M&A) & their Valuations i...