That's because India does not have a serious venture capital industry with an appetite for risk, observes T N Ninan.
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a US-based venture capital firm, on Monday announced investments of $29.5 million in two Internet companies in Bangalore.
IT and ITeS companies accounted for $28.1 billion of the total investment pie during the first nine months of 2021.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani on Monday laid bare the succession plan at India's most valuable company, identifying twins children Akash and Isha for telecom and retail leadership, and youngest son Anant for new energy unit. He, however, insisted he isn't retiring yet and will "continue to provide hands-on leadership as before". At the annual shareholders' meeting of Reliance Industries Ltd, he said the robust architecture that he has announced will ensure the firm remains "a unit, well-integrated and secure institution even as it develops existing businesses and adds new growth engines."
'We will likely never know why Xi decided not to travel to New Delhi. One possible explanation could be his desire to avoid a meeting with US President Joe Biden.'
The exports in 2022-2023 was $79 billion, compared to imports of $50 billion.
Investments by private equity and venture capital funds (PE/VC) declined by 22 per cent in March to $4.6 billion spread across 107 deals, a report said on Wednesday. The deal activity showed an increase of 54 per cent by value at $15.5 billion across 360 deals, largely on the back of heightened activity in the startup space, the monthly report by IVCA and EY said. "While India's position as an attractive destination for PE/VC investments is expected to remain strong in 2022 given its high growth and macroeconomic and policy stability, the continuing geopolitical tensions, rising inflation, quantitative tightening by the US FED and inversion in the US yield curve are potential downside risks, making investors circumspect," Partner at EY Vivek Soni said.
Beauty and Personal Care (BPC) e-retailer Honasa Consumer's initial public offering (IPO) has failed to find backing from analysts due to the company's weak financial track record and expensive valuation. T Manish, research analyst at Samco Securities suggests avoiding the IPO as the company's financial performance does not inspire confidence. "The profit has been inconsistent and advertising and marketing expenses are incredibly high at around 40 per cent of the revenues.
Unlike many other B-schools, IIM Ahmedabad follows a cluster system of final placements process where sectors are invited in cohorts at regular intervals.
The government will create an EV Venture Capital Fund, for financial support to start-ups in the segment. The overall aim is to make Tamil Nadu the preferred destination for EVs and component makers.
So far, VCs used to fund start-ups which either had product prototypes ready or had some customers on board.
Last year in January at Amazon's flagship event Smbhav, Infosys Co-founder N R Narayana Murthy had to shorten his keynote speech from 20 minutes to about five because the event was delayed by 1.5 hours. "I will try to finish it in five minutes, because I am not used to delays," said Murthy, while addressing hundreds of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) about building businesses that last. In the audience was Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Murthy referred to Bezos' prediction that the 21st century will be the Indian century. "That confidence enhances our enthusiasm," said Murthy. The relationship between Murthy and Bezos dates to 2014, when Prione, a 49:51 joint venture (JV) between Amazon and Murthy's venture capital company Catamaran, was formed.
Postman, a leading application programming interface platform, has secured $225 million in a Series D round, placing its valuation at $5.6 billion. With this, Postman has emerged as the most-valued software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm started by Indian founders, overtaking web and mobile testing firm BrowserStack, which was valued at $4 billion in June. The valuation of the San Francisco-headquartered firm with offices in Bengaluru, where it was founded, has almost trebled in just about one year and risen multi-fold since 2019. Postman, with team members spread across four continents, had secured $150 million in a Series C investment round led by Insight Partners at a $2-billion valuation last summer.
The Piramal group and Zurich Insurance have decided to jointly bid for Reliance General Insurance, a subsidiary of Reliance Capital. The groups had earlier submitted separate bids for the general insurance business of bankrupt Reliance Capital. Both Piramal and Zurich will hold 50 per cent each in the proposed special purpose vehicle (SPV).
Nineteen people have been killed in rain-related incidents in Uttar Pradesh in the past 24 hours, the state relief commissioner's office said Monday evening.
Sayre Therapeutics aims for a spot among top 5 players in oncology.
The number of draft red herring prospectuses (DRHPs) filed with the markets regulator - Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) - jumped nearly fivefold to 145 in 2021-22 (FY22), compared with just 30 in the preceding financial year (2020-21, or FY21). This was on account of companies rushing to take advantage of a favourable market sentiment towards initial public offerings (IPOs), triggered by an influx of new investors, surge in the secondary market, and encouraging performance of newly listed stocks. In fact, DRHPs filed in FY22 was 4x the previous 10-year average and the highest since 2007-08, according to primary market tracker PRIME Database.
If Ahmedabad is India's preferred candidate, as seems likely, hosting Olympics 2036 should give it a leg up: A bigger airport, a better metro network, more hotels, flyovers and so on, observes T N Ninan.
VCs also do not want to under-finance companies and are ensuring that the current capital infusion takes them through at least 18-24 months, which is the expected time when the outside fundraising environment starts to recover, says Alok Mittal.
Anil Ambani-group run Reliance Technology Ventures Limited (RTVL), on Tuesday said that it has invested in the Seattle-based, early-stage company, Pelago Inc.RTVL, however, did not disclose the amount invested in the US company. RTVL is the corporate venture capital arm of the Reliance ADA Group and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Capital.
Quitting high flying jobs in the US, two IITians have joined hands to start a tea cafe chain 'Chaayos' in the NCR region.
Interrupting a two-month streak of decline, outward foreign direct investment (FDI) rose sequentially to $1.85 billion in July over $1.07 billion in June, an increase of 73 per cent. However, it was lower than the $2.18 billion in July last year, according to the Reserve Bank of India data. Outbound FDI, expressed as financial commitment, has three components - equity, loans, and guarantees.
ABCL owns the TV9 media house, which runs satellite television channels in several regional languages, including Telugu. iLabs is promoted by Raju.
Fintech companies believe that the impact of Reserve Bank of India's order last week on unsecured loans will be visible in six to 12 months and prompt them to diversify and strengthen their secured portfolio. Fintechs which source funds through banks or non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) are looking at quickly building their secured portfolio options to at least 40 per cent of their total portfolio. "Over the medium to long term, as part of our product strategy, we are evaluating secured products which can be enabled over a digital platform" said Yogi Sadana, the founder of Zype, a lending-focussed fintech.
Venture capitalists (VCs) invested around $928 million (around Rs 3,700 crore) in 80 India-based firms during 2007 -- a 166 per cent increase over the $349 million invested in 36 deals in 2006 --, according to the latest quarterly India Venture Capital report published by Dow Jones VentureSource.
After agonizing over this for weeks, he made a decision. When they met after work one evening, he startled her by blurting out, 'I think we should break up.' A moving excerpt from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayana Murthy.
Silicon Valley venture capitalists are scaring their companies--and each other--with tough talk. The smart ones are also still investing.
N R Narayana Murthy, co-founder and chief mentor of India's second-largest IT services provider Infosys Technologies, is planning to invest in US-based clean technology venture capital fund Siderian Ventures.
The race for space has got real, and it is attracting funding like never before. In 2022 so far, funding to private players in the space sector has jumped a whopping 61.5 per cent - soaring to $108.52 million compared to $67.2 million in 2021. Propelling it is the government's decision to open up the space sector to private players and the work done by companies like Skyroot Aerospace, the Hyderabad-based start-up behind the launch of India's first privately developed rocket on November 18.
Something is cooking in online food delivery. After 15 years of grappling with the demands of the business - read cash burn - Gurugram-based Zomato reported its first profit in the first quarter of 2023-24 (FY24). Not satiated, it reported a profit in the following quarter as well: Of Rs 36 crore in the second quarter compared to Rs 2 crore in the first. A year ago, in the second quarter of FY23, it had reported a loss of Rs 251 crore.
In India, US venture capitalists invested $101 million in 13 deals in the first quarter, 29 per cent less than the $142 million via 22 deals in the March quarter of 2008, as per data compiled by research firm Dow Jones VentureSource. Venture capitalists put $1.87 billion, the lowest quarterly total since 2004, via 250 deals for emerging companies in India, China, Europe and Israel in the first quarter as fund managers prefer assured returns from portfolio investment.
Dixon Technologies right now is a beehive of activity. It is building a new facility in Noida to make 1.3 million laptops for Taiwanese PC maker Acer. The facility must be up and running in four months. The pace of activity will only increase. Last week Dixon won a similar contract from Lenovo, the Chinese personal computer maker and the third largest information technology (IT) hardware brand in India, to assemble laptops and notebooks. Though the clientele in these two cases is Taiwanese and Chinese, Dixon is a company reaching for the stars with its feet planted firmly in the Indian government's policy.
According to Venture Intelligence, PE/VC investors have already invested $93 million in 10 education companies so far in 2011, led by a Rs 100 crore (about USD 22 million) investment in vocational training and placement firm Teamlease Services.
Technology infrastructure solves many problems, but it cannot build roads or bridges and provide clean water. However, such activities are essential for human progress, and their creation provides jobs, says R Gopalakrishnan.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has recommended to the finance ministry a series of measures to curb investment flows from venture funds and into real estate.
The growing mismatch between Go First's losses and other group companies' profits was making it tough for the group to fund the losses of the airline venture.
It is thanks to the policy of liberalisation conceived by Manmohan Singh and enforced by P V Narasimha that the Indian economy has now become the world's 5th largest economy by nominal GDP, asserts Dr Sudhir Bisht.
The Intel Capital India Technology Fund, with a corpus of 250,000, was established in 2005-06 in India through which tech VC has invested a lot in data centre technology, telecom and infrastructure, apart from e-commerce.
Kirani, is passionate about working with start-ups when they are at the ideation stage.