In February last year NetAmbit had raised $11.25 million in a Series B round from Helion and Bessemer. The round was led by Helion which invested $9 million. Bessemer had come in as a Series A investor in 2007.

Founded in 2000 by IIM Ahmedabad alumni Girish Batra, the company started out as a web solutions provider for dotcoms. The Internet bust soon after led it to change its business model to direct marketing and it became an agent for the Bharti Group, selling mobile connections, Internet cards and other products. In 2003 it forayed into direct selling of financial products, which has become its mainstay now.

In November last year, NetAmbit acquired Seedfund-backed personal finance portal Rupeetalk for an undisclosed amount. The company currently employs 3,500 people and had a presence across 150 locations in India.

Kaltura launched its video platform in September 2007. The startup has four founders — Ron Yekutiel, Shay David, Michal Tsur and Eram Etam. The video platform is free but the company makes money by providing value-added services such as custom work, hosting and streaming, content syndication and ad-serving.The startup will use the fresh funding to enhance rich-media functionalities on tablets, mobiles phones and other devices.

What others are saying about the deal

• Kaltura raises $20 million from Nexus, Intel Capital (Medianama)
• Kaltura raises $20 million for open source video technologies (Mashable)

One97 has earlier incubated two mobile VAS startups — Oorja Mobile Services and TenCube on its own. SAIF Partners, incidentally, is also the largest institutional investor in One97. It currently holds 41 per cent and has invested $20 million in the company so far, according to this VC Circle report. The private equity firm, reportedly, increased its stake by an additional 10 per cent just shortly after the company announced plans to go public this year with a Rs 120 crore offer. See the draft red herring prospectus filed with the Indian markets regulator SEBI here. Other investors in the company include Intel Capital and Silicon Valley Bank.

Founded in 2000 by 31-year old Vijay Shekhar Sharma, One97′s clients include Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone. Read more at the company’s blog.

(Source: Press Release)

The launch is an important milestone for the Santa Clara, California-headquartered SVB Financial Group (NASDAQ: SIVB) which started building a presence here in early 2004. As a complement to venture capital, which is just beginning to take off in India, the launch of SVB’s venture debt services opens up a critical flanking source of capital for early-stage companies both in technology and non-technology sectors.

How venture debt helps young companies

Typically, startups fund their businesses by selling equity to venture capitalists in exchange for cash. This process is repeated at regular intervals (as and when fresh cash in required), often with multiple investors until the startup turns cash-flow positive. Over time the venture capitalist could end up owning a controlling stake in the company — a common cause for heartburn between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at the time of exit.

Venture debt, on the other hand, can come in as a bridge between equity investment rounds thereby helping the startup to make the equity capital raised last longer. How? The startup can use debt capital to finance equipment purchases and other working capital needs and reserve the equity money raised from venture capitalists to finance business activities such as research and development, marketing and recruitment — read this detailed and simple guide to how venture lending works in this Venture Intelligence post in 2005 when Hattangdi launched Citigroup’s venture lending service in India. A Chennai-based business process outsourcing startup, Secova eServices, was the first Indian company too raise venture debt — it raised $1.5 million.

SVB Financial Group and India

The group started in 1983 — it was the brainchild of former Bank of America executives — as a bank for early and mid-stage technology companies and venture capital firms based in Silicon Valley. It currently counts over 500 venture capital firms as clients. Commercial banking accounts for 70 per cent of the group’s business — this service is not yet available in India. In addition, it also does venture investing as a co-investor alongside venture capital firms. The venture investing arm manages $1 billion in capital which it invests either in various venture capital funds or directly in companies.

The group’s global holding subsidiary for international businesses, SVB Global, entered India in February 2004 with an office in Bangalore. This became the landing station for many of Silicon Valley’s renowned venture capital firms who now have local offices in India. Sample a few: Norwest Venture Partners, NEA-IndoUS Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Bessemer Ventures and many more. SVB Global’s Bangalore office houses SVB India Advisors which is engaged in a slew of activities, principal among which is to help US-based companies and venture capital firms navigate the setting up operations in India and offers the same support to Indian companies looking to find their feet overseas. Its other significant activity is venture investing — it launched the $54 million SVB India Capital Partners Fund in mid-2007 and has been a prolific investor, mostly via co-investment deals, over the past few months. The Mumbai office will be home exclusively, for now, to the venture lending outfit.

I will be talking to Ajay Hattangdi extensively in a couple of days about the venture lending business and will bring you his thoughts and plans here. If you have any questions specific to venture lending and how it can help your business, let me know so that I can pose them to him.