Round II for View Group alumni: Anybody remember The View Group? Perhaps the name Tracmail, a business process outsourcing company in Navi Mumbai, will jog your memory. It was the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm’s most notable investment in India. This week two former View executives were in the news for separate reasons. Dow Jones’ eFinancial News reports that Gaja Capital Partners, a private equity firm founded by former View India head Gopal Jain, raised $15 million from UK-based Electra Partners. VC Circle further reports that Gaja Capital aims to close its first fund corpus at $200 million. Jain’s colleague at View, Mintoo Bhandari, who led investments out of Silicon Valley, has just been signed up by New York-headquartered Apollo Management to head its India operations. Bhandari, who has been with Apollo’s UK outfit for a while, is currently setting up an office and team in Mumbai, reports VC Circle.
Tougher PE/VC investment guidelines: The Economic Times reported early this week that Indian markets regulator Sebi is in the process of evolving a new mechanism to regulate private equity and venture capital investments in India. The report says that the new guidelines could include barring investments by private equity firms in listed companies. It may also make it mandatory for every fund that wants to invest in India to register with Sebi. Currently, out of the estimated 300-odd funds investing in India only under a 100 are registered with Sebi. All of this seems to be directed towards controlling one concern area — investments in the real estate sector. See more in VC Circle’s analysis here.
Startup Deals: Voice-based search startup Ubona raised undisclosed Series A funding from Capital18. Mobile TV startup Apalya Technologies raised $500,000 from Mumbai Angels. Also, not quite startup deal, but e-publishing company PreMedia Global has raised $4 million from NEA Indo-US Ventures.
