App Development in exchange for equity
Josh@RRW has profiled an interesting startup called Prototype Invest. The company is a unique kind of early stage investment firm.
Instead of providing capital in exchange for equity, the company provides programming and design skills to interested entrepreneurs. This would be particularly helpful to build a prototype for entrepreneurs who, have the idea but dont necessarily have have the needed technical-programming skills. “Think of us as a Venture Capital firm providing software, web applications and guidance, instead of money”, is how they describe themselves. In return, they take a small equity stake in the company.
The idea is pretty unique in terms of what one would expect from a investment firm. Whether the concept is successful and the idea is disruptive - we’ll have to wait and see.
What do you think - would such a model work ?
Guruji.com targets Rs 20 crores revenue by 2009
Guruji.com, the Indian search engine, has started monetizing traffic by adopting a pay-per-click revenue model and is hoping to make $5 million (Rs 20 crores) by end of 2009 - early 2010.
Guruji received a first round funding of $7 million from Sequoia Capital and Suvir Sujan (Nexus India Capital) and is looking to close a second round of $10 million in the next couple of months.
via BS
Helion Venture Partners closes second fund of $ 210 million
Helion Venture Partners has closed a second fund of $210 million. The first fund was raised in late 2006 and totaled $140 million.
They also plan to expand focus into high growth sectors like retail, education and and finance - basically, expand beyond the Internet and mobile space.
Here’s what Ashish Gupta, MD Helion VC, had to say in a DNA India story:
“Across the board, most VC funds have at least a couple of investments in the internet and mobile space. But the rate at which these investments have taken place has been slower than what everyone had made it out to be. It has not lived up to the hype or caught fire very quickly”
I guess, that’s one of the rationale behind expanding the focus.
Cleartrip gets $18.5 million third round funding
Cleartrip has raised an additional $ 18.5 million in a third round of funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. DFJ provided $ 10 million in the round while the rest came from the Mahindra Group and the earlier investors.
This brings the total investment in Cleartrip to $ 30. 2 million.
via release
VCs pump $928 million in 2007 in India, a 166% YoY jump
VC’s invested $928 million in 80 deals in the Indian market last year. This is a whopping 166% increase over last year - in 2006, a $349 million was invested in 36 deals. 48% ($384 million, 38 deals) of the $928 mill went to IT companies, business-consumer-retail got $346 million (30 deals), healtcare got $100 million (7 deals).
Median size of the round was about $9 million in 2007 as compared to $8.7 million in 2006.
via release.
VentureBeat also has a spreadsheet with the segment wise breakup.
iXiGo gets funding from BAF Spectrum
Travel search aggregator, iXiGo, has received its first round financing from Singapore based investment firm, BAF Spectrum. The size of the funding was not revealed. The funding will be used for marketing and scaling up operations.
William Klippgen, Executive Director at BAF Spectrum, will join iXiGo’s board.
Chakpak gets funding from Erasmic Venture Fund
Probably this is old news. But I dont remember reading about it anywhere.
Seems that Erasmic Venture Fund has invested in Chakpak, a Web 2.0 Bollywood portal. Chakpak appears in the list of portfolio companies for Erasmic. No specifics known about the size of the funding.
My review of Chakpak is here.
Komli owned PubMatic takes $7 milllion series A
PubMatic, the ad-network aggregator, launched by Komli, has taken a series A funding of $7 million. Investors participating in this round include Nexus India Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures.
TC quotes that they have 1500 beta users and the investment will help them to expand their user base.
via TechCrunch
Indian Government to launch seed fund ?
This story in BS caught my eye.
The Indian government is taking steps to float a fund to make seed capital available to entrepreneurs. The govt. is putting together a framework for setting up an innovation promotion council. The fund’s initial corpus of Rs. 75 crores will come from the Dept. of Science and Technology. Three entities will be involved - the govt., TiE (to rope in VC and angel funds once the seed funding is over) and ISB (where ideas will be examined and nurtured).
The idea seems to be inspired by Israel’s efforts at such incubators.
Myntra gets seed funding from Erasmic Venture Fund
Myntra, a consumer Internet startup providing personalized gift services, has secured seed funding from Erasmic Venture Fund and a few additional angel investors. Erasmic has nominated a team member to the Myntra board of directors. Sasha Mirchandani of Mumbai Angels has also joined the board.
The funds will be used for procuring advanced technology for on-demand printing, scaling up operations and new marketing options.
via release