PE Activity for the Week ended 24 March, 2013
During the week ended 24 March, 2013, there were nine PE/VC deals worth $231.9mn compared to five deals worth $40.7mn in the previous week. The year 2013 has so far aggregated $830.3mn of PE investments across 85 deals compared to $2.38bn (130 deals) during the same period last year.
PE Deals that happened during the week are:
The Startups View
Of all the deals, investments that were done in startups include Intel Capital’s investment in online health store Healthkart.com, Asian Development Banks investment in Simpa Networks and GSF India & Insitor Fund investment in Biosense Technologies.
Gurgaon-based start-up Bright Lifecare Pvt Ltd, which runs the online health store Healthkart.com, has closed a Series B funding round of up to $14mn led by Intel Capital with Sequoia as a co-investor. Healthkart started in March 2011 with seed round of $1mn from Kae Capital and Sequoia. Omidyar Networks and Sequoia together invested $5.2mnin Jan 2012 in the company’s Series A round. Currently Healthkart’s monthly revenues are about $1mn. Healthkart sells products across fitness, health and personal care categories such as nutrition, diabetes, home devices, eye and personal care.
Multilateral funding agency ADB made an investment of $2mn (about Rs 10.8mn) in Simpa Networks, which offers a prepaid payment platform to enable affordable clean energy solutions for under-served consumers in India. By 2015, Simpa Networks’ pay-as-you-go solar energy solution is bound to provide more than 60,000 household in rural India with better access to electricity.
Mumbai-based medical devices startup Biosense Technologies Pvt Ltd has secured $0.5mn in funding from GSF India, a startup accelerator programme launched by former Reliance Entertainment president and GSF Superangels founder Rajesh Sawhney, and Insitor Fund, a social venture capital fund focused on early stage social enterprises in Asia. The funds will be primarily used to launch a series of products for the healthcare sector.
Fund Raising Events
Samwer Bros $194mn VC fund for developing markets: Samwer brothers, who launched incubation vehicle Rocket Internet through which they clone successful consumer internet ventures in new markets, have taken the wraps off a new €150 million ($194 mn) VC fund called Global Founders Capital. This would be an entirely different play from Rocket Internet, which is an incubator that builds and later sells startups. Rocket Internet has some 8-10 eCommerce investments in India alone. Global Founders Capital is a pure-play VC fund. Global Founders Capital will be stage-agnostic fund with opportunities for seed, Series A or even later rounds. However, it would refrain from investing in a pre-launch startup.
Mobile payment firm Beam Money eyes $20mn in second round of funding: Delhi-based mobile payment startup Beam Money Pvt Ltd is in talks with investors including existing investor Gray Ghost Ventures to raise around $20mn in a second round of funding. Beam Money is backed by Gray Ghost Ventures and Doon Foundation from whom it raised around $10mn in 2009. The firm is closing the current financial year with revenues of over Rs 1bn and claims to have hit the break-even point. It is now looking to triple the revenues by the end of the next fiscal year ending March 2014.
This week’s PE Activity information was provided by Research4India, the research services arm of Four-S Services Pvt Ltd.
