KPMG executive director Himanshu Mandavia details how various venture capital funds are structured and the tax and regulatory aspects that govern different kinds of funds.
Will books-to-electronics etailer Flipkart close the deal to raise a reported $150-200 million before Christmas? Prashant Prakash and Subrata Mitra, partners at Accel Partners India, would probably hope so. News is that the Bangalore-based venture capital firm could be coasting towards a 25X return (25 times the original investment) on its 2009 investment in the [...]
Menlo Park-headquartered Bessemer Venture Partners has raised a new $1.6 billion fund, dubbed Bessemer Venture Partners VIII and its largest to date, reports the New York Times. About a quarter of the fund, or approximately $400 million, is being reserved for investments in India says the report. The fund will invest in early stage companies. [...]
Mumbai Angels and Reliance Venture Asset Management have exited their investment in Hyderabad-based Dhama Apparel Innovations in favour of two unnamed investors, reports Mint. The Reliance Venture website says that it has earned an IRR (internal rate of return) exceeding 100 per cent on the sale of its 45 per cent stake. Mumbai Angels sold [...]
Walden International has made a $6 million Series B investment in Chennai-based online financial services marketplace BankBazaar, reports The Economic Times. The startup, founded in 2007 by Adhil Shetty, Arjun Shetty and Rati Rajkumar, positions itself as the world’s first neutral online marketplace that gives consumers instant customized rate quotes on loans and insurance products. [...]
Venture capitalists invested in five early stage companies in February. Investments
Canaan Partners has announced the appointment of Rahul Khanna, former director at Clearstone Venture Partners, as managing director for its India investments. Khanna joins Canaan’s leadership team here led by Alok Mittal, Deepak Kamra and Harish Gandhi. He will focus on early stage deals in the consumer Internet, mobile, software and managed services sector, said [...]
Accel Partners has made a Series A investment (amount undisclosed) in Bangalore-based investment research and analytics firm Probe Equity Research. The company does research for companies, private equity and venture capital firms and fund managers in India, Europe and the US. The company’s founders WS Ravishankar and Atul Shinghal worked in the corporate and capital [...]
Kanwal Rekhi’s Inventus Capital has made a Series B investment (amount undisclosed) in in Bangalore-based Pilani Soft Labs , makers of online bus ticketing service redBus — press release. This is redBus’ second round of funding since its inception in 2005. The company had raised about $1 million in seed money from Seedfund last year, [...]
A bunch of independent research reports are out on worldwide venture capital and private equity activity during the April to June quarter of 2009. Overall, fundraising and investment levels continue to be depressed, compared to the same period in 2008. But, the second quarter numbers mark some improvement over the January to March 2009 quarter. [...]
Accelerator to angel to VC flow still struggling to find equilibrium in India
I had fun moderating the panel on early stage financing at India Internet Day. VCCircle has an interesting article. The key issues are as under: 1. Too few deals are progressing from accelerators to angel, and from angel to Series A. Only five per cent of deals going from accelerators to Series A might not [...]
The early ecommerce marketplace pioneers: eBay class of 2000-2005
TechCrunch recently published an article I wrote about how the eBay class of 2000-2005 helped shape ecommerce in Silicon Valley and continues to innovate and move the sector forward. By understanding what shaped this class’ experience and examining where these alums are today, we identified the most important industry trends and start to see a [...]
The founder’s guide to surviving the Series A crunch
The Indian entrepreneurship and venture capital ecosystem is fast maturing. Today we have more early stage funds than ever. This fund availability will only improve, aside from the temporary blips caused due to macroeconomic ups and downs. We are in one such ‘crunch’ today, where even though seed and angel funds are writing cheques with [...]
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