India is gradually becoming an
attractive destination for venture capital funds. The job of raising requisite capital is a
nightmare for young organizations. Everyone has the right to carry
on with a legal economic activity and the same holds good for newly
set up organizations or small undertakings and they should also
be given an opportunity to prove their competence. Moreover,
an entrepreneur who is talented and filled with innovative
ideas but lacks adequate capital cannot be allowed to sacrifice his
dreams only due to paucity of funds. Venture capital is like an angel
that lends a helping hand to the needy and ambitious entrepreneurs.
As many as 40 new funds are targeting India
with most of them being from the US. Not only the US but also European
capital funds are showing paramount interest in operating in India.
However, setting up venture capital in any developing economy is
a daunting task. The story is not different in economies like
India as they suffer from unstable macroeconomic environments and
histories of state involvements in the use of national
capital and in the composition of production. However, the venture capital
picture has improved in India with the establishment of software
services industry after 1985. After numerous failures, venture capital
tasted success to a great extent with the slow process of moulding the
environment of rules and permissible institutions.
Today, India
is flushed with investment commitments from technology
giants. Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, SAP, Intel and AMD have
each committed over a billion dollars to further
develop their presence in India. So, India has many leading
venture capital firms from Silicon Valley. Earlier, the Valley venture
capitals investment avenues were only restricted to their backyards,
but at present the scenario is different. Matrix Partners
announced a $150 mn India fund, Westbridge Capital, an
India focused fund that has been around for five
years. Several other major venture capitalists are playing the space.
Some of them include: Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Norwest, Battery,
Sierra, Canaan Partners. Apart from software services, another area of
attraction for venture capitals in India is consumer Internet and
mobile offerings. Travel, jobs, matrimonials, games, mobile
payments are all segments getting substantial capital infusion. |
