Srini Vudayagiri Quits Lightspeed Venture Partners

Sreenivasulu "Srini" Vudayagiri, an India based Venture Director with Lightspeed Venture Partners, is quitting the venture capital firm. When contacted, Vudayagiri said, "I will be transitioning out of Lightspeed by end of this month." He declined to comment on his next move, saying he will announce his plans at an appropriate time. "I will continue to be in the industry," Vudayagiri said. Vudyagiri joined Lightspeed in 2007 from Thomas Weisel International, where he was heading the India-focused fund of funds. Thomas Weisel's India fund was sold off to Guggenheim Partners last year. Lightspeed's India investments include Four Interactive (which runs local search firm AskLaila) and Tutorvista, an online tutorial business. Earlier this year Lightspeed appointed Bejul Somaia as Managing Director in India, a position which was held by Vudayagiri before. Vudayagiri was appointed as a Venture Director around that time.
Lightspeed, which has an India office in New Delhi, is now looking to make PIPE (private investment in public equity) deals, and is looking for a mix between early and late stage companies. It's looking for investments in areas like healthcare, education, fincial services, advertising & media, besides its focus area of technology.

Source: VCCIRCLE

BlueRun Raises Fund IV; To Increase Investments in India

BlueRun Ventures has raised its fourth fund of little more than $240 million, falling short of the $300 million target. VentureBeat reports that the fund plans to ramp up its operations in Asia by adding two more people in India and China. It also plans to increase the allocation to both these markets, the report adds. BlueRun, formerly known as Nokia Venture Partners, has an office in Mumbai. Sasha Mirchandani, a senior investment director with the VC firm, looks after its activities in the country. Earlier this year he told VCCircle that BlueRun is looking at investments in value-added services, telecom, media & entertainment, education and cleantech sectors. In another development, BlueRun has closed its office in Israel, citing the small size of the market. BlueRun's investments include PayPal. It has offices in US, Norway, China and Korea, besides India. The venture fund, Nokia Venture Partners, had made several investments in the country including Bangalore-based Sasken Communication Technologies.
BlueRun has cut its team by two and a half partners as one of its partners, Sujit Banerjee, is being shared with another VC firm in Element Partners. Banerjee will bring cleantech deals to Element, and semiconductor deals to BlueRun.

Source: VCCIRCLE

VenturEast raising eighth fund; To focus on Non-Metros

Venture capital investor VenturEast has started raising its eighth fund, VenturEast Life Fund III LLC, focusing on high-growth small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The fund has applied to World Bank's private equity arm International Finance Corporation (IFC) for commitments of upto 20% of the total commitments raised. The target size of the fund is not known.
When VCCircle contacted Sarath Naru, the founder and managing partner of VenturEast, he said target size is still under discussion. On being asked to comment on this development, he quipped that there is no "development" till the first close is done.

IFC was also an investor in $150 million VenturEast Proactive fund. The two organizations also recently came together with Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust to launch $5 million microequity fund, to provide equity-like support to small and disadvantaged entrepreneurs.
Interestingly, VenturEast Life Fund is looking at mezzanine investments besides equity and equity-related investments. The fund will also focus on investments outside main Indian metros, which is Tier II, Tier III cities and rural India. The new fund will look at areas like healthcare delivery, pharma related companies, food & agriculture and cleantech.
The new fund will be managed by VenturEast Mauritius Investment Advisors and APIDC Venture Capital Private Limited. APIDC VC was started as a joint venture between Dynam Ventureast Private Ltd, which held a 51% stake and Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corp. Ltd (APIDC), which held the remaining stake. The fund was later privatized with APIDC holding only 1% stake.

The fund will also raise monies from domestic institutions simultaneously in a different entity. VenturEast, one of the oldest fund managers in the country, has raised capital from investors like UK-government backed fund-of-funds CDC, US-based Argonaut Private Equity, Saudi Economic and Development Co., Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC) and internet giant Google for its earlier funds.

Several private and venture capital funds are looking at investing in rural economy. This area is a relatively underserved segment of the market and is witnessing an increasing growth in demand for goods and consumer products. Till now PE & VC funds in India have mainly focused on opportunities serving urban spending.

Many of the recent private equity deals have been in rural segment, especially in food and agriculture based firms. Zephyr Peacock, which raising its second fund targeting $75 million, is also looking at this area.

Source: VCCIRCLE

Lazard seeks FIPB nod to launch Venture Cap fund in India

Lazard Group is learnt to have seeking Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) nod to launch Venture Capital fund in India. Lazard will start Lazard India Growth Fund based out of Mauritius and will invest USD 25 million as part of sponsor commitment. The Fund primarily is looking to invest into mid market companies especially in infrastructure and some of the other growth areas.Lazard Group will also approach IL&FS to act as trustee to the fund.
On similar lines, Nomura is also seeking FIPB nod to start proprietary trading in India.

Source: CNBC

GVFL Raises Rs 100 Cr For Rs 250 Cr Fund; To Get Rs 60 Cr More

GVFL Ltd, which is currently raising its SME Technology Venture Fund with a target of Rs 250 crore, has achieved first close at Rs 100 crore. The fund will get another Rs 60 crore in next few months, the firm's interim Managing Director Mihir Joshi said in an interview to VCCircle. Joshi has been appointed after long standing MD Vishnu Varshney stepped down from his post. Joshi is heading the fund till a new MD is found.
GVFL has raised about Rs 133 crore over five funds till date, and the new fund is its sixth vehicle. The target size of the new fund is nearly more than double the size of all the previous five funds combined. The dramatic increase in the fund size is because the new fund will focus on growth capital investments.
Till now GVFL has focused on early stage deals, investing between Rs 2-10 crore per deal. With the new fund, its deal sizes will go up. GVFL raises most of its funds from domestic institutions and its limited partners include institutions like CDC, IDBI, SIDBI, World Bank and other private and public sector organizations.
Stepping Up Investments
GVFL now seems be looking to step up investments and Joshi believes that this is the best time to invest. "We may close 2-3 more deals in next one month," he added.
The fund is looking to do deals in areas like information technology, biotech and nano technology. It will look at areas like healthcare and education in the IT domain, said Joshi. Some of GVFL's recent deals were white light emitting diode (LED) solar lighting systems maker Pegasus Semiconductors. One of its portfolio firms, 20 Microns, also listed on exchanges in October last year, in which the firm offloaded a part stake.
GVFL is one of the most active and largest state government-backed venture capital firms in the country. Other such VC firms include Punjab Infotech Venture Fund, Kerala Venture Capital Fund, Hyderabad Information Technology Venture Enterprise Ltd, Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund, etc.

Google likely to set-up venture capital arm

Google Inc, which a couple of years ago gave a tough time to venture capitalists by lapping up startups even before VCs spotted them, is now directly entering the space. The search engine is rumoured to be launching a venture investing arm titled Google Ventures. If this is indeed true, Google would be joining the likes of corporates like Cisco, Nokia, Qualcomm and Motorola, all of which have corporate venture arms.

A Reuters report speculates that Rich Miner, the head of Google's Android project, would be affiliated with Google Ventures. Miner, who joined Google in 2005 after the search giant acquired Android way back in 2005, is responsible for wireless platforms. He joined Google in 2005 when the search giant acquired Android, a company he co-founded and which is the basis of Google's new smartphone operating system.

A Google spokesman asked about Google Ventures on Thursday said, "It's a project we're working on. But we're not able to discuss the details right now."