Budget 2008 came and went by last weekend and not a murmur on venture capital. A lot of folks in the industry had hoped for a word on the tax pass-through benefit that was withdrawn in Budget 2007 except for investments in select sectors. Much is expected in terms of deal activity in the early stage segment this year. Investors who entered the market last year have more or less settled in and we should see some interesting alliances being forged in sectors such as consumer services, Internet and mobile, niche outsourcing and tech products.
Shantanu Surpure a legal expert on US and India early-stage deals has a take on the devil in the fineprint for venture capital in this budget. Read his take at VCCircle‘s Union Budget 2008-09: Much left unsaid for the VC/PE eco-system.
On a different note, couple of events in Mumbai to look forward to this week. Tomorrow, March 4th, is IAMAI’s ‘Mobile VAS 2008′ conference. Paymate founder Ajay Adiseshann is one of the speakers. The other one is BarCampMU3 on March 8th at KJ Somaiya Institute Sion. This is a long pending camp. It was originally scheduled for last September but was called off for unspecified reasons.
