Ventureast to raise $150 Mn
Thursday, 01 November 2007, 19:30 IST
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Mumbai: Hyderabad-based venture capital firm Ventureast Funds said Wednesday it will raise funds worth $150 million by March 2008. "We plan to double the capital under management from $96 million to $150 million, investing in both early-stage companies building new technologies as well as growth-stage companies using technologies to build leadership," said Ventureast managing partner Sarath Naru. "A significant focus will be to invest in businesses that address needs of the digital divide and bottom-of-the-pyramid markets, and needs of small and medium enterprises," Naru told reporters Wednesday. "Among the new funds, one will be focused on the life sciences sector and will be branded under Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corp Ltd (APIDC), the main sponsor of the fund. It will be headquartered in Hyderabad. The second will be focused on the IT sector under the Ventureast brand and be based in Chennai." Ventureast has its origins in 1997 as a 51:49 joint venture between Dynam Ventureast Pvt Ltd and APIDC. The company will now fund micro-equity-like funds focusing on seed investment with a fund corpus of $5 billion to test the proposition of equity-like funding for the socially disadvantaged, like the corner store and the local "panwalla", who find it difficult to get loans from banks. Naru said that the firms's first two funds were under APIDC Venture Capital, which has investors like Andhra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and Life Insurance Corp, International Finance Corp Washington, a leader in private sector development promoting growth and competitiveness, Saudi Economic and Development Co, US-based Argonaut Private Equity, a direct investor in India and US and Uand Norfund of Norway. "We have a $40 million biotechnology fund and a $92 million life sciences fund. We will now have funds under management of about $300 million," Siddhartha Das, Ventureast's general partner told IANS. "We focus on business and technologies that are relevant to India, having a multiple funds with a pioneering focus," Das added. The Indian venture capital industry has grown significantly since 1995, largely as a result of the recent boom in the technology industry. With venture capital firms now looking to invest in new sectors such as healthcare and biotechnology, this growth is expected to continue in the coming years, said Das.
Source: IANS
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