IDG Ventures (read our complete coverage of IDG) is planning to raise India specific fund of $300 mn (expects to complete raising the money by 2009). IDG has invested in 8 Indian firms so far: 3D Solid Compression, Kreeda, Aujas Networks (part of EIR programme), Manthan Systems, ConnectM, Ozone Media, iViz and Perfint.[source]
SeedFund. backed by Google and Reliance ADAG is
looking to raise its second fund with a corpus of $30 million [source]
Erasmic too is planning the next round of fund raising ($30mn).
Other VC firms entering India
- Inventus Capital, $125mn venture fund is planning to invest $1 – 10 million in 15-20 early stage, technology focused Indian companies.
- Walden, $1.6bn fund in committed capital is entering India (after 5 years of hiatus)
VC Investment in India
Q1 reports, 2008:
- Total Deals : 21 (while there were 28 deals announced in Q1 2007, a sharp decline of 25%).
- Max. Deal Size: $18.75mn (ClearTrip)
- Close to 50% (10 out of 21) deals were in the range of $5-10 million.
- $87 million via 14 deals [More]
With so much of action happening in India, I don’t think startups can ever crib about lack of VC interest. The general complaint from VC firms is the lack of quality startups.
Ashish Sinha