Google Takes An LP Approach In India; Invests In Erasmic And Seedfund

Google is taking an LP approach in India as to investing. The Mountain View-based search giant has invested in two early stage or seed stage funds - Bangalore-based Erasmic Venture Fund and Mumbai-based Seedfund. The amount of investment in both firms is undisclosed.

"While the rush of large amounts of venture capital into India is well-documented, very little of this trickles down to small firms - the early-stage startups. Our effort is to build this gap by investing in these funds,"

said Samir Sood, head (corporate development - South Asia), Google.

Apparently, India is the first country where Google has made a limited partner investment in early stage funds. These funds would essentially look at product innovations in consumer, Internet and mobile services.

New Enterprise Associates Appoints Ben Mathias As VP Of Indian Operations; To Invest $200 Million In India

US venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates has announced that it will invest $200 million in Indian technology sector. The fund has appointed Ben Mathias as Vice President of the Indian operations - under the entity New Enterprise Associates (India) Pvt. Ltd. Mathias will work closely with NEA’s US-based technology team. NEA has $8.5 billion in committed capital across 13 funds.

“We have been selectively investing in India for many years and believe the country offers an attractive environment for venture investing,”

said Peter Barris, NEA Managing General Partner.

The fund has investments in Sasken Communications, Telsima, Nevis Networks, Protostar, InSilica and GlobalLogic. NEA also has 20 per cent stake in NEA-IndoUS Ventures, an early venture capital fund started by Vinod Dham and Vani Kola. NEA will invest in early-stage IT investments indirectly through NEA-IndoUS Ventures. NEA’s direct investments will be primarily in mid to late-stage opportunities.

“NEA’s focus in India will be on expanding its investment portfolio, while making returns on our initial investments. We look forward to working with India’s best and brightest entrepreneurs in telecom, media, alternative energy, technology-enabled services and infrastructure,”

said Krishna “Kittu” Kolluri, General Partner.

“Our US-based team which also includes Mark Perry and Ravi Viswanathan, will be
consulting with Ben Mathias (head of Indian ops) to identify opportunities..."

Chrys Capital Sells Global Vantedge To Essar Group's Aegis For $22.5 Mn

It's official now. The Essar Group-owned Aegis has acquired BPO firm Global Vantedge for Rs 100 crore or $22.5 million. Global Vantedge, a 75 per cent of which is owned by private equity fund Chrys Capital, is a US-based credit and receivable management BPO.

Set up in 2001, Global Vantedge employs 1,400 people at in Gurgaon, San Jose and Costa Rica. It has operations in the banking, telecom and automobile verticals. The acquisition is the fourth by Aegis in the past one year. Global Vantedge will add over $25 million in revenues to the BPO business of the group. Aegis is scouting for more buys in the US.

It had earlier acquired Customer First and Orion in India and Technion in the US. In November 2003, Essar and Deutsche Bank had bought 80 per cent stake in Texas-based Aegis for $28 million. Later, the Essar group increased its stake in the company. Last year, Essar delisted Aegis Communications Group (ACG) from over-the-counter bulletin board (OTC BB) of Nasdaq at an equity valuation of $57.4 million.

GVFL Makes Seed Investment Of Rs 8 Million In RapidRadio

Venture capital fund GVFL Ltd has made a seed investment of Rs 8 million ($180,000) in RapidRadio Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a technology start-up spun off from the NirmaLabs incubator program. RapidRadio, set up in 2005, works in the area of RFID (Radio Frequency iIdentification) technology.

Rapid Radio is the sixth investment from the Rs 270 million Gujarat IT Fund of GVFL. Its previous investments include Net4Nuts, Ecube, Icenet, Anupam Globalsoft and Convergelabs from the fund. Rapidradio is GVFL’s first investment in a start-up from an academic incubator program.

“The RapidRadio investment is a new milestone in our endeavor to provide critical seed stage and early stage funding to innovative start-ups that are poised to take knowledge based test-marketed ideas into commercial production. We are now stepping forward into campus incubation programmes to identify and nurture promising ideas and entrepreneurs,”

said Vishnu Varshney, CEO of GVFL Ltd.

Dhaval Kotecha is the CEO of RapidRadio , a friend of mine! Congratz Bro!