Canaan Raises $600 Million Fund IX, India Deals to Maintain Current Pace

Canaan Partners has just announced the close of its ninth global fund with a $600 million corpus, dubbed the Canaan IX fund. The fund is marginally smaller than the $650 million eighth fund it has raised in 2007. Canaan general partner John Balen is quoted in Fortune as saying that the smaller size is aimed at enabling the Menlo Park,…

Read More→

Alok Mittal on why Happiest Minds makes sense

Canaan Partners India teamed up with Intel Capital this week to lead a $45 million Series A round of funding in Happiest Minds, the software services outsourcing startup founded this year by former MindTree chairman Ashok Soota. This is Canaan’s first and somewhat unusual investment in the conventional software services sector. As an early stage venture capital investor, the Menlo…

Read More→

Making Angel Investing Work

Canaan Partners hosted a breakfast roundtable with over 30 angel investors on December 22 in Mumbai. The objective was to brainstorm on constructive ways in which the potentially large angel community in India can engage better with young entrepreneurs. Alok Mittal, general partner, Canaan Partners, sums up the roundtable. Also check out his thoughts on a potential investment structure for…

Read More→

India Venture Capital Stats: 2009

Disclosed venture capital investments in 2009, by my count, stood at just under $150 million. The total number of deals announced was 59, out of which 28 did not disclose the investment amount. This is as per numbers collated from deals reported by various media and announced in press releases. Not all these deals are verified and in many cases…

Read More→

Canaan Partners’ Angel Initiative

How much does an average Indian startup need to get started up? Mukul Singhal, associate at Canaan Partners, reckons anywhere between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 50 lakh. Small change for most venture capitalists, except that most venture capitalists don’t invest such small change. This is angel investor territory. And there is a big untapped base of angel investors in…

Read More→