Author Archives: Snigdha Sengupta

Hello!

StartupCentral is currently not active. Select posts from our archives are available for reading. Thank you for visiting and stay tuned for updates.More

Manish Singhal on how Let’sVenture seeks to plug the angel funding gap

Bangalore based Let’sVenture, an online angel fundraising platform for startups founded last year, raised Rs 4 crore ($682,632) last month from a group of 21 investors as part of its first round of funding. What’s interesting about the round was the investors involved. Early stage venture capital firm Accel Partners came on board as the…More

Mayfield’s Nikhil Khattau on Fund II and seed funding

Menlo Park, California headquartered Mayfield Fund, the early stage venture capital firm that entered India in 2008, recently launched its second India fund with a $108 million corpus. The investment mandate for Fund II is a bit different from the firm’s first fund. When Mayfield kicked off investments here with its $111 million Fund I,…More

BVP tweaks India strategy; more technology, early stage startups

Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), the Menlo Park, California headquartered early-to-growth stage investor, is in the middle of small though significant transition in India. The firm has all but moved its operations to Bangalore, as it sharpens its focus on earlier stage investments in the technology domain. The Mumbai offices, which served as BVP’s India headquarters…More

NVP launches twelfth global fund with $1.2 bn corpus

Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), the Palo Alto, California headquartered multi-stage venture and growth equity investor, is announcing the close of its latest fund, dubbed Norwest Venture Partners XII, LP. The $1.2 billion fund targets early-to-late stage venture and growth investments across sectors. The new fund,  brings NVP’s total capital and commitments to approximately $5 billion…More

Sumit Jain on CommonFloor’s first acquisition, growth plans and bootstrapping

Last week, Bangalore based maxHeap Technologies, which operates real estate search and listings platform CommonFloor, announced its first acquisition with Mumbai based Flat.to, a students and single professionals focused property listings platform. The acquisition came just months after CommonFloor raised $10.4 million in a growth round of funding from existing investors Accel Partners and Tiger…More

Venky Natarajan on RuralShores, Lok Capital’s first non-MFI exit

Delhi headquartered impact investor Lok Capital, which manages $85 million over two India-focused funds, partially exited portfolio company RuralShores on Tuesday, earning a 6X return on its original investment. The exit is a milestone for the firm because it is its first non-microfinance exit and validates its 2012 strategy to diversify away from the microfinance…More

Kleiner India head Sandeep Murthy launches Lightbox Ventures

Mumbai based Lightbox Ventures is the newest entrant to the Indian venture capital market. The barely a month-old firm has some familiar names at its helm. The team is fronted by Sandeep Murthy, who has just stepped down from Sherpalo Ventures, where he led the India investments for both Sherpalo and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and…More

Lok Capital scores 6X partial exit from RuralShores

Lok Capital, the Rockefeller Foundation-backed impact investment firm, is announcing a partial exit from BPO company RuralShores. The financial details of the exit have not been disclosed. However, the firm said that it has earned a 6X multiple on its initial investment, made from the Lok Capital Fund I. The investment was made in 2009.…More