Mayfield Fund has finally launched its maiden India fund, dubbed Mayfield India I, with a $110 million corpus ( press release at peHUB). The firm set up shop here in 2006 with an investment team comprising of Nikhil Khattau, Vikram Godse, Navin Chadha and Robin Vasan. In September the Silicon Valley-headquartered Mayfield closed the $395 million Mayfield Fund XIII, which is a US-focused fund, in what can best be described as a hostile fund-raising environment. The India fund has been in the pipeline for close to a year now.
The firm already has a few investments here including Consim, Geodesic Techniques, Seedfund, Tejas Networks, Servomax, Paymate, and Genesis Colors. Tejas and Seedfund were its first two investments here.
While the $2.8 billion Mayfield is a venture investor (seed-to-second stage) in the Valley, here it focuses on slightly later-stage deals in terms of the maturity of companies it targets. VC Circle reports that new India fund will focus on expansion deals specifically in the consumer, infrastructure ancillary and technology sectors. Deal ticket sizes are pegged at $5-15 million.
The India investment team operates between the Valley and Mumbai. Godse and Khattau work out of the firm’s Mumbai office. Read a Mint interview with Godse. Khattau, who likes to keep a low profile and did some angel investing prior to joining Mayfield, was the founding CEO of Sun F&C Asset Management which was acquired by Principal Financial Group in 2004.
Apart from India, Mayfield has a fairly extensive presence in China. It entered the Chinese market in 2003 in partnership with GSR Ventures with which it has jointly raised two funds worth $300 million. The focus in China is on semiconductor, Internet and wireless companies.
Photo Courtesy: Mayfield Fund