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Venture Capital and Innovation:
The Indian ExperienceB. Bowonder and Sunil Mani
Biographical Notes
Dr. B. Bowonder is Dean of Research and Chairperson of the Centre forTechnology Management at the Administrative Staff College of India. He has aPhD in engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His contactaddress is Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad-500 082, India, Tel:+91-40-3310952, Fax: +91-40-3312954, E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Sunil Mani is Researcher at the United Nations University/Institute for NewTechnologies (UNU/INTECH) Keizer Karelplein 196211 TC Maastricht, The Netherlands, Tel: +31-43-3506331, Fax: +31-43-3506399, E-mail: [email protected]
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Venture Capital and Innovation:The Indian Experience
B. Bowonder and Sunil Mani
Abstract
This paper presents an overview of evolution of venture capital support for
innovation in India. There are three governmental supported schemes and a
large number of venture funds currently in operation. An analysis of venture
capital funding trends indicates that venture capital also has strong linkages with
innovation-based clusters. The paper also summarizes the support provided by
the venture funds to innovative firms. It has been observed that though they are
many determinants the two major elements that contributed to the success of
venture capital assisted firms are: providing market linkages and sharpening
the business plan. From the firm side, experiential base of the entrepreneursand clarity of the market are the factors that reduced the market uncertainty. The
analysis shows that linkages between innovation, clusters and venture support
are becoming tighter. This has got immense importance in public policy arena.
Support for creating clusters and developing high-tech entrepreneurs are likely to
be the interventions that are effective.
Keywords
Venture capital, innovation, financing innovation and clusters
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BACKGROUND OF THE INDUSTRY
In the last decade, one of the most admired institutions among industrialists and
economic policy makers around the world has been the US venture capital
industry [Dossani and Kenney 2002]. The sensitivity of venture capital process
to government policies and other factors that influence entrepreneurship and
innovation was highlighted in a study by the US General Accounting office on
behalf of the Joint Economic Committee [Premus 1985]. Venture capital
entrepreneurship and innovation have been closely connected. Entrepreneurs
have long had ideas that require substantial capital to implement but lacked the
funds to finance these projects themselves [Gompers and Lerner 2002]. Venture
capital evolved as a response to this felt need. Venture capital represent one
solution to financing the high risk, potentially high-reward projects [Gompers and
Lerner 2002]. The experience of US, Taiwan and Israel show that technological
innovation and the growth of venture capital markets are closely interrelated
[Premus 1985]. It has been reported that capital markets overlook small
business opportunities because of high information and transaction costs,
generally known as capital gap problem [Premus 1985, Smith and Smith 2002].
Though venture capital can meet this gap to some extent, venture capital is a
special form of venture financing. In the case of venture capital, the capital
market has to be conducive for supporting venture funding. At some level,
entrepreneurship occurs in nearby every society, but venture capital can only
exist when there is a constant flow of opportunities that have great upside
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potential [Dossani and Kenney 2002]. This study is a country overview of the
venture capital industry supported by a set of case studies.
Evolution of VC Industry in India
The first major analysis on risk capital for India was reported in 1983 [Chitale
1983]. It indicated that new companies often confront serious barriers to entry
into capital market for raising equity finance which undermines their future
prospects of expansion and diversification. It also indicated that on the whole
there is a need to revive the equity cult among the masses by ensuring
competitive return on equity investment. This brought out the institutional
inadequacies with respect to the evolution of venture capital. The role of venture
capital was met initially by the following institutions:
Industrial Development Bank of India.
Industrial credit and investment corp of India
State Finance Corporations and
Small Industries Development Bank of India
The first origins of modern venture capital in India can be traced to the setting up
of a Technology Development Fund in the year 1987-88, through the levy of
access on all technology import payments [IVCA, 2000]. Technology
Development Fund was started to provide financial support to innovative and
high risk technological programmes through the Industrial Development Bank of
India. Subsequently, Government of India gave the procedures that can be used
for starting venture funding.
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The growth of VC in India has three separate phases. The first phase was the
initial phase in which the concept of VC got wider acceptance. The first period
did not really experience any substantial growth of VCs. The 1980s were
marked by an increasing disillusionment with the trajectory of the economic
system and a belief that liberalization was needed. The liberalization process
started in 1985 in a limited way. The concept of venture capital received official
recognition in 1988 with the announcement of the venture capital guidelines.
During 1988 to 1992 about 9 venture capital institutions came up in India.
Though the venture capital funds should operate as open entities, Government of
India controlled them rigidly. One of the major forces that induced Government
of India to start venture funding was the World Bank. The initial funding has
been provided by World Bank. World Bank reported that India will require $67 to
133 million per annum as venture capital. It gave a total of US $45 million for
starting VC funds in India. The most important feature of the 1988 rules was that
venture capital funds received the benefit of a relatively low capital gains tax rate
which was lower than the corporate rate [Dossani and Kenney 2002]. The 1988
guidelines stipulated that VC funding firms should meet the following criteria:
technology involved should be new, relatively untried, very closely held, in
the process of being taken from pilot to commercial stage or incorporate
some significant improvement over the existing ones in India
promoters / entrepreneurs using the technology should be relatively new,
professionally or technically qualified, with inadequate resources to
finance the project.
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Between 1988 and 1994 about 11 VC funds became operational either
through reorganizing the businesses or through new entities and they are
given in Table.1.
All these followed the Government of India guidelines for venture capital activities
and have primarily supported technology oriented innovative businesses started
by first generation entrepreneurs [Verma 1997]. Most of these were operated
more like a financing operation. The main feature of this phase was that the
concept got accepted. VCs became operational in India before the liberalization
process started. The context was not fully ripe for the growth of VCs. Till 1995,
the VCs operated like any bank but provided funds without collateral. The first
stage of the venture capital industry in India was plagued by in experienced
management, mandates to invest in certain states and sectors and general
regulatory problems. Many public issues by small and medium companies have
shown that the Indian investor is becoming increasingly wary of investing in the
projects of new and unknown promoters [Ramesh and Gupta 1995]. The
liberation of the economy and toning up of the capital market changed the
economic landscape. The decisions relating to issue of stocks and shares was
handled by an office namely: Controller of Capital Issues (CCI). According to
1988 VC guideline, any organization requiring to start venture funds have to
forward an application to CCI. Subsequent to the liberalization of the economy in
1991, the office of CCI was abolished in May 1992 and the powers were vested
in Securities and Exchange Board of India. The Securities and Exchange Board
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of India Act, 1992 empowers SEBI under section 11(2) thereof to register and
regulate the working of venture capital funds. This was done in 1996, through a
government notification. The power to control venture funds has been given to
SEBI only in 1995 and the notification came out in 1996. Till this time, venture
funds were dominated by Indian firms. The new regulations became the
harbinger of the second phase of the VC growth. The notification had the
following salient features:
The guidelines made it easy for both private and government firms to
enter the VC arena
It relaxed the criteria so as to allow the entry of any kinds of firms.
Whereas this activity was restricted to All India Public Sector financing
institutions, State Bank of India and other scheduled banks including the
banks operating in India and the subsidiaries of the above, subject to RBI
permission for banks till 1996
a VC fund is prohibited to carry on any activity other than the VC fund
the minimum size of VC that was stipulated as Rs. 100 million (US $2
million) was removed
the new regulations prohibited investment by venture capital funds in the
equity shares of any company or institution providing financial services
to promote early stage financing atleast 80 percent of the venture capital
funds shall be invested in the equity shares or equity related securities
issued by a company whose securities are not listed on any recognized
stock exchanges
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within the stipulation of 80 percent of the VCF investment, a venture
capitalist can invest in the equity share or equity related securities of the
financially weak company or a sick industrial company whose securities
may be or many not be listed on any of the recognized stock exchanges.
This condition is provided for supporting later stage and turnaround
financing by venture capitalists.
Venture capitalist can finance the companies which have already been
assisted in any of the categories mentioned above
Venture capitalist can invest the balance 20 percent of the VCF in any
listed companys securities viz shares and debentures or make inter
corporate deposit with listed companies or invest directly in R&D division
of listed companies
The second phase of VC growth attracted many foreign institutional investors.
During this period overseas and private domestic venture capitalists began
investing in VCF. The new regulations in 1996 helped in this. Though the
changes proposed in 1996 had a salutory effect, the development of venture
capital continued to be inhibited because of the regulatory regime and restricted
the FDI environment. To facilitate the growth of venture funds, SEBI appointed a
committee to recommend the changes needed in the VC funding context. This
coincided with the IT boom as well as the success of Silicon Valley start-ups. In
other words, VC growth and IT growth co-evolved in India.
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Major recommendations of the VC committee:
The committee came to the conclusion that the venture capital industry in India is
still at a nascent stage. It also stated that with a view to promote innovation,
enterprise and conversion of scientific technology and knowledge based ideas
into commercial production, it is very important to promote venture capital activity
in India. The report prepared a vision, identified strategies for growth and how to
bridge the gap between traditional means of finance and the capital needs of the
high growth start-ups.
The committee (The committee is known as Chandrasekhar Committee)
identified five critical success factors for the growth of VC in India, namely:
the regulatory, tax and legal environment should play an enabling role as
internationally venture funds have evolved in an atmosphere of structural
flexibility, fiscal neutrality and operational adaptability
resource raising, investment, management and exit should be as simple
and flexible as needed and driven by global trends
venture capital should become an institutionalized industry that protects
investors and investee firms, operating in an environment suitable for
raising the large amounts of risk capital needed and for spurring
innovation through start-up firms in a wide range of high growth areas
in view of increasing global integration and mobility of capital it is
important that Indian venture capital funds as well as venture finance
enterprises are able to have global exposure and investment opportunities
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infrastructure in the form of incubators and R&D need to be promoted
using government support and private management as has successfully
been done by countries such as the US, Israel and Taiwan. This is
necessary for faster conversion of R&D and technological innovation into
commercial products.
A set of major recommendations were suggested that can help in the stimulation
of the VC industry in India, some of these are presented here
Eliminating multiplicity: There has been a multiplicity of regulations
relating to VC. There is a need for harmonization of regulations, as there
are three sets of VC regulations, namely:
SEBI (Venture Capital Regulations) 1996, Guidelines for Overseas
Venture Capital investments issued by Dept. of Economic Affairs (1995),
and CBDT Guidelines for Venture capital companies [1996]. To eliminate
multiple regulations, the committee proposed that SEBI should become
the nodal regulator for VCF so as to provide uniform hassle free, single
window regulatory framework.
Venture capital funds tax pass: VCFs are a dedicated pool of capital
and therefore operates in fiscal neutrality and are treated as pass through
vehicles. Once registered with SEBI, it should be entitled to automatic tax
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pass through at the pool level while maintaining taxation at the investor
level without any other requirement under Income Tax Act.
Foreign Venture Capital Investors: FIIs registered with SEBI can
freely invest and disinvest without taking FIPB (Foreign Investment
Promotion Board / RBI (Reserve Bank of India) approvals but FVCIs have
to take FIPB / RBI approvals. It was suggested that atleast on par with
FIIs, FVCIs should be registered with SEBI and having once registered,
they should have the same facility of hassle free investments and
disinvestments without any requirement for approval from FIPB / RBI.
Augmenting the domestic pool of resources: The present pool of
funds available for venture capital is very limited and is predominantly
contributed by foreign funds to the extent of 80 percent. The pool of
domestic venture capital needs to be augmented by increasing the list of
sophisticated institutional investors permitted to invest in venture capital
funds.
Flexibility in Investment and Exit: Eligibility for registration as venture
capital funds should be neutral to firm structure. The government should
consider creating new structures such as limited partnerships, limited
liability partnerships and limited liability Corporations. The IPO norms of
three year track record or the project being funded by the banks or
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financial institutions should be relaxed to include the companies funded by
the registered VCF. Those companies which are funded by VCs and their
securities are listed on the stock exchanges outside the country, these
companies should be permitted to list their shares on the Indian stock
exchanges.
The second phase of VC growth was essentially a learning phase. The rapid
growth of VC during 1995 to 2000 made government examine the issues in the
light of the Chandrasekhar Committee. The second phase growth has been
mostly of information technology driven. This was also due to Government of
Indias interest in attracting FDI into India. This paved the way for the next phase
of VC growth in India.
Based on the recommendations of the committee and based on the budget
proposals SEBI approved two new regulations:
SEBI (Venture Capital) Amendment Regulations, 2000 and
SEBI (Foreign Venture Capital Investors) Regulations, 2000.
The purpose of these were to change some of the lacunae in the existing
regulations. Government considered these changes as far reaching, whereas
industry viewed this as marginal changes. The major changes brought about by
these are many fold:
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VCF is defined as fund established in the form of a Trust, a company including a
body corporate and registered with SEBI which as a dedicated pool of capital
raised in the manner specified under the Regulations; to invest in venture capital
undertakings in accordance with the Regulations. The minimum size of the fund
from any investor will not be less than INR 500,000 and the minimum corpus of
the fund at the start has to be atleast INR 50 million. The new regulations
stipulated that the maximum investment in single venture capital undertaking is
not to exceed 25% of the corpus of the fund. The new regulations allowed VCF
to participate in a companys initial public offering through the book building route
as a Qualified Institutional Buyer.
The new regulations allowed Foreign Venture Capital Investor to register with
SEBI. Also, SEBI registered Foreign Venture Capital Investors will be permitted
to make investment pursuant to the automatic route within the overall sectoral
ceiling of foreign investment without having to obtain the prior approval of the
Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB). Along with this, with effect from
June 1, 2000 foreign investment in Indian securities is controlled by the
provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act 2000. This required that
an offshore VCF investing in India will need to consider the requirements under
the FEMA which Inter alia requires certain categories of offshore / foreign
investors to seek the prior approval of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board
constituted by the Government of India, before they invest in Indian securities.
The changes had a salutory effect on venture capital industry and this is the third
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phase of VC growth. Though the dot.com problem and global economic slow-
down affected VC funding, the software exports continued to surge. The growth
of IT exports over the year show that IT exports and VC growth has a strong
correlation. Unlike that in US, Government of India did not permit pension fund
to flow into VC. One of the basic differences between US SBIC and Indian pre
venture entrepreneurship has been that in that case of India there was no
relationship between entrepreneurship financing and VC financing. In the next
section a detailed analysis of VC trends are presented.
VC Trends in India
Initially, only Indian financial institutions were operating VC funds. Then off-shore
funds came into VCF. In 1997, Government of India supported a quasi VC fund
Technology Development Board. After the entry of offshore VC funds, the VCs
started evolving. This along with IT boom made innovative entrepreneurial firms
to evolve. The growth of VCs occurred, mostly, in selected clusters.
Growth Trends: Prior to 1988, in the absence of an organized venture capital
industry, individual investor and development financial institutions have hither to
played the role of venture capitalists in India. Initial response was poor but by
1995 the VC industry picked up. The SEBI initiated interaction with industry
participants and experts in the early 1999 led to a series of changes. Strictly
speaking the results of the earlier years and current growth are not comparable
because of the difference in capital investment requirements. In 1996-97, the
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total quantum of funds disbursed was US$20 million but in 2001-2002 it was US
$ 1.1. This was only marginally higher than what was actually disbursed in the
earlier year. Though 2001 was a relatively bad year investments in VC continued
at the same level. There has been increased interest in off-shore VC funds to
invest in India. Nearly 70 VC funds were operating in India, and they have an
asset base of US $ 5.6 billion. The amount has grown nearly twenty fold in the
past five years. It is reported that India will get about US $3 billion in 2002,
through India centric funds. Nasscom has reported that by 2007-2008 the VC
disbursement will reach US $10 billion per annum, as shown in Fig1.
Where does India Stand?
India was next to Japan in private equity investments in 2001 as shown in Table
2. China supported only 11 ventures where as India supported 91 ventures. The
growth of VC has been phenomenal in the Asian region [Varma 2002]. Till
recently firms were mostly obtaining license ensured profits in India. Hence, both
home grown VCs and entrepreneurs have minimal risk evaluation skills. Capital
is flowing into private equity funds after 2000. Most of the VCs are offshoots of
financial institutions in India. They have a lending mindset and look forward to
security in what essentially a risky venture (www.vcline.com). The regulatory
stance in India continued to be rigid. India would have attracted much more if the
context was less control oriented.
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Distribution of VC units: It is observed that 75 percent of the investments have
been placed in five states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, AP, Gujarat and
Karnataka. VC activities have been weak in most of the northern states. This
partly represents weak entrepreneurial spirit and lesser emphasis on governance
indicating that economic situation and innovation have a strong correlation. Out
of the 728 units that has been reported in 1998 about 540 units were located in
the top five states, as shown in Table.3. A comparison of the earlier trends
indicate that the gap between better off states and poor states are increasing.
The government funded technology development fund also exhibited a similar
regional dispersion. An analysis of entry of foreign firms and use of innovation
based funds have been found to be clustered in six locations in an independent
study [Bowonder 2001]. The distribution of R&D centres of global firms and
innovative small firms are clustered in the same locations as shown in Fig 2 to
Fig. 5 [Bowonder 2001]. FDI in R&D has enormous spill-over effects. Locational
decisions are mostly based on cluster advantages and specialization. In US as
well, the venture firms have been found to be distributed around certain locations
[Lerner 2002]. In the recent years the clustering effects are becoming dominant
and clusters are driving innovation. The relationship between VC and clustering
is intensifying and local linkages are becoming important. The earlier policies of
deliberate dispersal is likely to be ineffective. Local factors and specialization is
becoming important for innovation.
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VC Investment in Stages: An analysis of VC investments in 1998 in various
stages is presented in Table 4. It has been reported that nearly all VCs are
hesistant to invest in startups with inexperienced business personal or in firms
with unclear scalable business model, consequently seed funding in total
disbursements is only 15 percent in 2000-01. It has increased to a higher level
compared to what it was in 1998, indicating increased risk bearing attitude. The
total amount disbursed over expansion and late funding grew to about 41 percent
of the total, indicating VC preference to continue funding ventures that had
demonstrated success in their enterprise. The behaviour is similar in other
countries, but in India VC is a new phenomena and start-up accounted for 41
percent of the total disbursements. Because of the same reason, the third stage
funding is negligible. Also in India VCs did not have any preference for
turnaround investments. In US and Hong Kong this was prevalent to the extend
of 16% and 23%, as shown in Table 5. As per an earlier analysis VCFs
preferred investing in early stage ventures (70 percent of the disbursement). Till
recently, VCFs did not provide any of the following types of assistance to
industrial enterprises namely:
expansion capital
buy-out finance in the form of management buy out or leverage buy-out
acquisition finance and
sick company rehabilitation finance.
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One of the first large management buy-out occurred in Oct 4, 2002. Satyam
Infoway (SIFY) is the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in India. Two
venture capital funds acquired 33.4% stake of SIFY for US $20 million. The two
venture funds that picked up stake are:
Softbank Asia Infrastructure Fund (SAIF)
Venture Tech Solutions Private Ltd. (VTS)
SAIF will pick up 21.7 percent and VTS will pick up 11.7 percent. This is a
management buyout. Both the VCs have picked up the stake at a price of
$1.72 per ADR.
Investments by Industry: The distribution of investments in India by industry is
given in Table. 6. In the case of US, computers and Internet are the top two
venture investment categories followed by biotechnology [NSB 2002]. In India,
NSB US and Israel computer related products come in the top category followed
by consumer products, as shown in Table. 7. In India, electronics and telecom
have a relatively low share. The pattern till the end of 1995 is shown in Table. 8.
The pattern till 1995 was dominated by industrial products and slowly IT and
software started picking up. The reason for the shift has been that revenue
generation in IT ventures are rapid in comparison with the other sectors.
Contributors to the Venture Fund: The break-up of contributors to VC are given in
Table. 9. About 50 percent of funds came from foreign institutional investors.
The major VCFs operating in India are given in Table.10. Many of the VC funds
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did not have any prior experience, as indicated in the Table. 10. Most of foreign
funds came after 1998. One of the major triggers that changed the complexion
of the venture funds in India has been the entry of Intel. Intel Capital has used
very systematic criteria for screening the candidates and they have extensive
experience in assessing VCs. Most of the Intel supported VCs are well managed
firms and they acquired capability to manage business due to the support
provided by Intel Capital. External corporate venturing has been a model used by
many firms [McNally 1997]. Intel has been aggressively using this model. The
entry of external corporate venturing is a relatively new phenomena and most of
the firms supported by them are innovative firms. This phenomena enhances the
managerial expertise for assessing and supporting innovative firms.
TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT BOARD
Government of India initiated a major fund for supporting innovations in 1995.
This is a quasi-venture capital fund. It supports high opportunity projects by
providing equity or loan. It is a revolving fund. Government of India operated two
more similar funds. These are smaller in scope and of limited coverage. In the
case of TDB loan or equity till the project is commercialized there is no
repayment needed. After commercialization of the venture interest has to be paid
back. The Technology Developed Board invests in equity capital or gives soft
loan to industrial concerns and other agencies, attempting development and
commercial application of indigenous technology or adapting imported
technology to wider domestic applications. Though the support could be in the
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form of equity or loan the support provided to the firms so far has been
predominantly in the form of loan. They provide support to the extend of 33%
provided a commercial bank supports 33% of the total project cost. This Fund
has been one of the most successful government initiatives for supporting
innovations. The success rate has been more than 80% as the selection is based
on both commercial and technical feasibility. A similar fund is envisaged for
biotechnology. This scheme has produced many firsts in India. The Fund is going
to be enlarged in scope in the near future. The Board came into existence
through a separate legislation. The technology development assistance provided
by the Technology Development Board during the last five years is given in
Table .11. Transportation sector is the top category. Health and medical services
has come as the second largest category. Two good examples of TDB funded
cases are that of electric car and hepatitis B vaccine development. Details are
given in the case study section.
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Case Studies on VC assisted Firms
A number of VC assisted firms were visited by one of the authors. The following
are the firms covered in the study. After interviewing the Chief Executives of 26
firms, nine firms were selected and studied in detail. The firms visited and
executives interviewed are given below:
Name of the company Persons interviewed
Vinciti Networks Mr. P.S. RavindranathIttiam Mr. Srini RajamBharat Biotech Dr. K ElaIndus Biotech Mr. Sunil Bhaskar Venture Infotek Mr. N. Ravi Kumar SIFY Mr. R RamarajKshema Technologies Mr. A.R.Koppar Process Mind Mr. Nagendra RaoJataayu Mr. M. K. JainShantha Biotechnics Mr. K.Vara Prasad ReddyTejas Networks Mr. S. NayakReva Car Dr. U.R. Madhyastha
Icode Mr. N.G. KrishnaAvesthagen Dr. V. M. PatellMitoken Mr. S. PannalaAPIDC Venture Fund Mr. S. Naru *Network Solutions Mr. S. SarmaIonic Microsystems Mr. R. PadmanabhanAdamya Mr. N.R. MuralidharanFabmart Mr. K. VaitheeswarnInnomedia Mr. Mohan TambeDhunn-carr Mr. G.M. Iqbal *Deccanet Designs Mr. M.T. Karunakaran
Mistral Mr. A. AhmedGlobal Technology Ventures Mr. V. Shankar *Walden-Nikko Mr. S. Sethi *Strand Genomics Dr. Vijay ChandruChrys Capital Mr. S. Padam *Dresdner Kleinwort Mr. N. Deshmukh *Mindtree Mr. Rostow RavananMetahelix Dr. K. K. NarayananImpulsesoft Mr. Baskar
* VC Executives
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The analysis of nine firms studied are reported below:
TEJAS NETWORKS INDIA PVT. LTD.
The vision of Tejas Networks is to create state of the art products and solutions
in the telecommunications and optical networking arena. Tejas Networks was
founded in 2000. Tejas Networks developed software differentiated optical
networking products that provide high price / performance in their class, enabling
carriers to maximize revenue generating services while optimizing their overall
network costs. Tejas Networks also partners with leading third party equipment
vendors to build intelligent optical networks for its customers.
Founders and their experience: Sanjay Nayak is the Cofounder and Chief
Executive Officer. He worked as the Managing Director of Synopsys India. He
had experience in working with Synopsys, Viewlogic Systems and Cadence
Design Systems, in US. Dr. K.N.Sivarajan is the cofounder and Chief
Technology Officer of Tejas. He was a professor at Indian Institute of Science.
He worked prior to this in IBM Watson Research centre. He received his Ph.D
from California Institute of Technology. Arnob Roy is the third co-founder and
earlier he worked with Synopsis India. The Tejas team consists of outstanding
professionals with a wealth of experience in deploying carrier class optical
networks in India and USA.
Origin of the idea: Mr. Nayak and Dr. Sivarajan decided to create something new
for self-actualization. The wanted to create a world class product company, as
they wanted India to develop innovative telecom products. Mostly, Indian firms
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were in software services. They wanted to create products from India. This urge
made them seek venture capital as they had innovative ideas.
Venture Investors: There were three venture investors for Tejas Networks in the
first round, and they are
Mr. Gururaj Deshpande, Chairman of Sycamore
Sycamore Networks, a publicly held corporation and
ASG Omni LLC, a financial agency.
In the first round the three investors funded US$ 5 million. In the second round
Mr. Deshpande, Intel Capital and ILFS invested US$ 6.7 million. Intel Capital is
the strategic investment arm of Intel.
Products: The main products of Tejas are cost effective SDH Multiplexer
equipments designed to manage bandwidth and derive services from the optical
core to access. Innovation in optical networking requires high levels of software
and hardware integration capabilities. Tejas has undertaken the design and
deployment of optical networks. Through innovation and learning Tejas is able to
compete with global firms like CISCO, Nortel and Lucent. Tejas combines the
cost advantage of India and the innovative strength of its founders. The optical
products are based on the dense wave diversion multiplexing and optical
amplification to transmit data optically at aggregate rates exceeding one terabit
per second over distances of a few thousand kms on a single strand of fibre.
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Tejas Networks India Ltd, an optical networking start-up launched its intelligent
optical access product in India in less than year after its start. Intel Capital
announced funding after the product was announced. The nine month company
got immediately its first customer, Tata Power to deploy the TJ-100 access
product. This is the first intelligent optical network in India. The system leverages
the capacity creation of DWDM technology and innovative networking software.
With the Internet infrastructure market growing at about 20 percent per annum
Tejas Networks hopes to market its TJ 100 family of products in the global
market. Venture funding and value addition: Tejas Network is a knowledge
integrator. The firm essentially develops network software and markets
Sycamores optical networking products in India and the Asia Pacific. It also
develops some regionally specific networking products: The venture capital firms
supported Tejas in a number of ways:
The name of Deshpande added reputation and acted as a non-traded
externality to attracted VCFs
Intel capital helped in wetting the business plans
ILFS helped in co-funding through its private equity arm and
ASG-Omni helped in developing business contacts.
STRAND GENOMICS
Strand Genomics is a bioinformatics company, that develop innovative
algorithms and solutions in the field of bioinformatics. Stands vision is to
accelerate the drug discovery process by developing a suite of products for
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genomics, proteomics and in silico-biology. Use of the state of the art knowledge
management solutions allow nuggets of knowledge to be extracted from a large
pool of data generated by high throughput technology. Though it is a new firm, it
has been able to get contract research from many global firms. It is likely to get
its second stage funding. The exact amount has not been announced.
Founders: A group of scientists and engineers from US and in India came
together to become a world leader in bioinformatics. The founders were
computer scientists with complementary skills in
clustering techniques
graphics and visualizations and
stringology.
All the Board members have a Ph.D degrees and rich domain experience Dr.
Vijay Chandru who is a Professor of Biochemistry at Indian Institute of Science,
came from MIT. The objective of setting up Strand was to develop tools that
leverages unique high-end computational skills.
Venture Funding: UTI Venture Funds picked up a 17.5 percent stake for an
undisclosed sum. UTI Venture funds picked up a 17.15 percent stake in strand
after a thorough assessment. The second stage funding is by Westbridge, an off-
shore fund.
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Product: Strand Genomics had launched two products Soochika is a micro-array
knowledge management tool and sphatika is an image classification software.
The objective is to provide a tool box that addresses the most common problems
faced by drug discovery scientists. The company has a total solutions approach
to drug discovery. The tools cover modules for
visualization
high dimensional data analysis
microarray analysis
intelligent drug prediction tools
protein modeling and
sequence modeling and analysis tools.
Strategy: Within an year of its establishment it introduced a series of products.
Strands business model is a combination of providing high-end services and
building out a suite of products called Oyster to improve the productivity of the
drug discovery process. Strand uses a service model that provides revenue on a
continuous basis. For example, Strand entered into a partnership with Gladstone
Institutes to analyze complex microarray data. Strand will use its proprietary data
analysis techniques to analyze microarray data sets generated at Gladstone
Institute from experiments using Alzheimers disease related mouse models to
identify certain genes and associated regulatory networks. Strand also entered
into partnership with Automated Cell which is a disease phenotype driven drug
discovery company. Strand provides advanced algorithmic skill sets and software
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engineering skills to develop products and solutions for Automated Cells drug
discovery platform which quantifies in vitro disease phenotypes for target
prioritization and validation and lead optimization in oncology and immune
disease.
Strand is a unique company with skill sets normally not available. The senior
team consists of a group of scientists and problem solvers encompassing the
areas of computer science and biology with the requisite skills for drug discovery.
Strand focuses on solutions that have resulted in huge improvements in both
productivity and interpreting knowledge from genomic data. The solutions that
strand provides are cost effective and scalable and hence an unbeatable
combination. Strand Genomics Cofounder Dr.R.Hariharan is in the Technology
Review TR100 list in 2002. The service oriented and long term partnership
relationships make Strands model a fast growth and low risk model. The second
stage funding was announced recently.
AVESTHAGEN
Avesthagen is a fully integrated biotechnology and bioinformatics company setup
primarily to promote research and development services world wide making use
of proven latest high-throughput technologies and supported by a well trained
research team. The vision of the company is to improve the productivity in
agriculture and develop agro-technologies that would lead to value addition in
food and pharma products. Avesthagen focuses on contract research for global
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firms and it is a cost effective research firm in genomics. Research as a business
concept it has developed research competence.
Founder: The company was founded by Dr.Villoo Morawala Patel. He was
awarded a Ph.D in 1993 in plant molecular biology from the University Louis
Pasteur, France and work experience at University of Ghent, Belgium. She
founded Avestha Gengzaine Technologies in April 1998.
Origin of Idea: Dr Patell returned to India with high hopes and spun off
Avesthagen in April 1998 with four employers using the technology developed by
per at TIFR through the funding from Rockefeller Foundation. Avesthagen raised
US$ 2 million as venture funding from ICICI Ventures, Global Trust Bank and
Tata Industries Ltd. The dream of Dr. Patell was to invent edible vaccines and
new plants using genomics.
Venture Capitalists: The three institutions that funded the first round (US$
1.5million) are:
ICICI Venture Funds
Global Trust Bank and
Tata Industries Ltd
ICICI is one of the foremost investor and stakeholder in Avesthagen. GTB has
offered a loan, which was later, converted into Avesthagen equity. Tata
Industries picked up a stake in Avesthagen.
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Avesthagen has engaged Kotak Mahindra and KPMG as investment bankers to
facilitate the process of raising the second round funding. Avesthagen is looking
for a funding of $10 million in the second round. In 2001-2002, Avesthagen has
an income of US$ 1.5 million and it hopes to breakeven this year and reach a
revenue of US$ 10 million in five years.
Products and services: Avesthagen focuses on both products and services. This
business model is basically more robust, as services provide for a regular base
revenue. Avesthagen essentially provides four services:
providing user friendly database application and management for life
science companies
providing new tools that allow the prediction of complex sequence at the
gene and protein level using customized algorithms and annotation tools.
providing 3D fold structural insights to protein modeling
providing clean vital data from a given bulk sequence.
Avesthagen has developed complimentary DNA libraries in 3 modules, namely
standard cDNA libraries, normalized and subtractive cDNA libraries
Avesthagen was recently awarded a US patent on a segment of rice DNA
sequence. This well help them in enhancing the rice productivity. The second,
thrust area is edible vaccines. The vaccines will be made part of the gene in a
plant food product so that it can administered easily and in a cost effective
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manner. This firm is one of the VC assisted firms that is focusing on creation of
intellectual property. In this case, venture firms helped in assessing the business
model for its robustness.
ITTIAM SYSTEMS
Ittiam is positioned in the fastest growing segment of the core technology space:
Digital Signal Processing Systems: DSP Systems. The DSP chip market is about
US$5 Billion in the year 2000, growing at 30%. The market for DSP software and
system design is about US$9 Billion growing at more than 50% per annum.
Founders and their dreams: Mr. Srini Rajam who was the head of Texas
Instruments India Ltd and six colleagues decided to create a world class
technology company in India. The drive to come together was the passion to
create a world class technology company. Seven people with 15 to 25 years of
experience came together. The challenge was to create the worlds best DSP
Systems Company. Mr Srini Rajam was the head of TI India Ltd. TI India was
one of the most innovative companies in India as it topped the best companies
operating in India that were granted US patents in the year 2000.
Venture capital:Ittiam started in 2001 with a seed capital of US$ 5 million from
Global Technology Ventures. GTV is an investment arm of Sivam Securities and
has an investment from Bank of America. After that in the second round the Bank
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of America Fund offered US$ 5 million for another 6.6%, a price which value this
start-up at a staggering $75 million.
Products: Within a year of their start, Ittiam has developed multiple products in all
their target domains. This includes video imaging and audio speech products in
multimedia in addition to wireless and wireline products in communication. Ittiam
also announced its wireless products, which are IEEE 802.11 based wireless
LAN. Ittiam has developed solutions for both 802.11b standard which has a
bandwidth of 11MBPS and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.
Ittiam will lead the new wave of global product companies from India. The
company represents the collective aspiration of the team to lead the new wave of
Indian technology products thriving in the global arena. Ittiam is singularly
focussed on Digital Signal Processor based systems in wireline, wireless,
audiospeech and video-imaging products.
Consistent with its bold vision, Ittiam is pushing the frontiers in all the key areas-
business, technology and people. In business, Ittiam has chosen to go beyond
the traditional service model and has committed itself to products, both
customized and off the shelf technology. In technology, Ittiam selected
integration as its strategy-algorithm, software to the actual reference board that
resides in the end equipment. On the people front, Ittiam works with the
fundamental belief that the company is co-owned by all who work and share the
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dream-irrespective of the function. The company gave shares to all its
employees.
Ittiam is one of the most innovative firms operating in India with high quality
intellectual property. DSP solution is implemented on a generic platform. Ittiam
has system focus and not chip focus. The platform integrate all the interrelated
domains. The company has a full fledged marketing group and it has entered into
a strategic partnerships for overall solutions. In other words, Ittiam is a unique
niche player with the ability to innovate. There were no technologies companies
in India and Ittiam positioned itself as a technology company. The core
competence of Ittiam is its capability to identify good windows of opportunity. The
five aspects that distinguishes Ittiam are
experienced team
market focus
world class orientation
high level platform as the mode of integration, and
vision to a global leader in DSP design.
MINDTREE CONSULTING PVT. LTD
Mindtree is one of the fastest growing software companies operating in India.
Mindtree was selected as one of the best places to work in Information
Technology. Mindtree was one of the top 100 IT employers in the US within the
third year of its establishment, according to the Computerworld survey in 2002. It
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focuses on state of the art technologies and high level reusable intellectual
property.
Founders: A number of highly experienced persons from some of the best
companies got together and worked out a plan to start a new firm. The mission
was charted out as: deliver business enabling solutions and technologies by
creating partnerships with our customers in a joyous environment for our people.
The logic of their getting together was that many of todays software services
companies will not be able to be leaders in the emerging future. Because,
knowledge enabled software requires six things to remain in the leadership
position, namely:
domain capability
extensive use of tools
methodology
quality
innovation and
brand positioning
Mr. Krishna Kumar was the chief Executive of Electronic Commerce Division,
Wipro. Mr. Anjan Lahiri, who was working with Cambridge Technology Partners
is the Second Partner. Mr N.S. Parthasarathy General Manager, Wipros
Technology Solutions is the third partner. Rostow Ravanan worked with Lucent
Technologies and prior to that in KPMG. Mr Ashok Sootha who was the chief
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Executive of Wipro is the Chairman of Mindtree. Kamran Ozair who worked with
Cambridge Technology Partners was another founder. Scott Staples was also
with Cambridge Technology Partners. Mr. Kalyan Banerjee who worked as the
head of Wipro Technology Solutions Division also joined the founding team.
Vision of 2005
The company set up a very ambitious and aggressive target:
to achieve a revenue of $231 million
to be among the top 10% in our business, in terms of profit & ROI
to be one of the top 20 globally admired companies
to give a significant portion of our PAT to support primary education.
Venture Capitalists: The first round funding was by the Founders, Global
Technology Ventures and Walden International. The first round funding was US$
9.5million. In 2001 August Mindtree secured the second round funding. This was
US$ 14.1million and this was by:
Global Technology Ventures
The founders
Walden International
Capital International and
Franklin Templeton Fund.
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Products and Services: Mindtree is essentially a services company. It operates in
six thrust areas namely,
internet Technologies
enterprise Integration and B2B
ERP and supply chain management
mobile platform and technologies
application management and
setting up offshore development centers.
The strength of Mindtree is its ability to leverage its vast knowledge base to
prescribe tools and architectures which will work for specific business models
and industries. The collective experience, coupled with the creation of Mindtree
Labs, ensures that the solutions will have high quality and success. The focus of
Mindtree unlike the other software firms have been to leverage intellectual
property. Mindtree helps firms to improve its product design life cycle. Mindtree
developed a set of intellectual properties to complement the product realization
service offering. These technology building blocks reduce the product design
cycles and may be licensed as individual reusable components. It has a
multiplatform, multivendor approach to application development. Mindtree
established its own software engineering methodology namely: Distributed Rapid
Architecture Development with quality. This methodology encompasses clear
processes and measurement criteria and captures organizational learning at all
the stages of product development, from concept to life cycle ownership. In three
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years time Mindtree evolved into a multicultural and multinational organization.
The word Mindtree appears in ancient Indian literature, written in 4000BC
meaning a source of eternal intellect and wisdom for all who came in contact with
it, because it springs from the mind.
In the interview with one of the founders he indicated that companies fail
not because of market, but lack of experienced teams. Mindtree has one of the
best teams with strong business leadership. The focus of the company has been
on intensive learning. It works global firms and mostly on difficult projects and
newer state of the art areas. The main contribution of venture capitalists has
been the refinement and sharpening of the business plan.
NETWORK SOLUTIONS
Network Solutions was a Venture funded company. It focuses on convergence
solutions to network problems. It has become the preferred vendor for many
firms for integrated data networks. Mr.S.Sharma who started this was nominated
for the outstanding Entrepreneur of the year 2000 Award. It had an income of
US$ 3 million in 1994 and it reached US$ 19 million in 2001.
Founder:Mr. Sharma is an electronic engineer. He worked with Motorola and HP
for sometime. Subsequent to this he implemented a number of independent
projects in Asian countries such as China, India, Singapore and Thailand. While
working on these projects he started a networking service firm for the
multinationals operating in Bangalore. The main focus was designing networks
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that are cost effective and reliable and identifying network architectures that are
reliable, secure, cost effective and platform independent.
Venture capitalists: Intel capital acquired 15% of its stake in the first round
funding. This was for US$ 1.1 million. There was a sharp increase in its revenue
after 1997. During the Internet bust the management purchased the stake of
Intel. Network Solutions is a private limited company, presently.
Products and Services: Network solution provision is the business of the
company. This has 800 people working. It is Indias largest vendor independent
network and telecom infrastructure solution provider. CISCO, Nortel, HP
Cabletron are its major clients. The growth of revenue of Network solutions is
given in Fig. 6. Network Solution is a unique company as it is the largest vendor
independent network infrastructure solution provider. It has become the preferred
solution provider for the large banks as well as the stock exchanges in India
though it is started by a single entrepreneur.
The uniqueness of the firm is that none of its customers have deserted it. The
company has a prudent debt planning policy and cost management system. The
firm has three domains of expertise and operates at 8 major centres in India.
It manages all aspects of the network lifecycle. The managed operations of
Network Solutions are shown in Fig. 7. Recently it has started providing call
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centre support. It is one of five fastest growing IT companies in India according a
survey conducted by Computer Today. It maintains its revenue through services
and retaining its client base. One of the value added services it provides is
software integration. The essence of learning has been collaborative learning.
The learning has been hierarchical as shown in Fig. 8. The venture support by
Intel Capital helped Network Solutions in enhancing the reputation. The support
provided was mostly financial in nature.
REVA The electric car company
Reva is the Indias first electric car designed by Reva Electric Car Company
(RECC) and is the short form for Revolutionary Electric Vehicle Alternative.
The vision of Reva is to establish a tradition of excellence and leadership in
environment friendly urban transportation by offering the best value and highest
quality electric vehicles in the world. Recently they have been able to get an
export order from UK.
Founders Reva is the creation of the Maini group headed by Sudershan Maini.
Founded in 1973, the Maini Group is today a multi-product, multi-division,
enterprise with business interests ranging from manufacture of high precision
products for the auto industry to electric "in-plant" material handling equipment,
from granites to abrasives and international trading. Sudershan Maini nurtured
the idea of a small car for India for 30 years but the idea conceptualized and took
a form only after Chetan Maini, his son joined Amerigon an U.S. based company
to work as a program manager on an Electric vehicle project. Chetan Maini who
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has a B.S., (Mechanical Engg) from University of Michigan and M.S.,
(Mechanical Engg) from Stanford University worked for General Motors (U.S.A.)
and Amerigon group of Incorporation (U.S.A.) before taking change as M.D. of
Reva Electric Car Company Private Ltd. He was the team leader of the solar car
team that won the GM sun race and stood 3rd in the world solar challenger in
Australia. He was also the project leader for the hybrid electric car project at
Stanford University. Before taking charge as Managing Director of REVA Electric
Car Company (P) LTD has worked for General Motors (USA) and Amerigon Inc.
(USA). Chetan Mainis experience with Maini precision products, his core
business, which produces high quality parts for OEMs in India and overseas
came very handy. The group got its first taste of electric powered vehicles at
Maini materials movement, which manufactures high tech equipment to transport
material people across shop floors. The company is committed to make available
facilities, which offer the customer maximum comfort at a minimal cost and make
Reva the vehicle of the future generation.
Origin of the Idea: Though the first electric vehicle was built in 1834, it was the
internal combustion engine that gained popular acceptance. Gasoline driven
vehicles were faster and cheaper with a greater range. Ready availability of
petroleum products resulted in a further drawback to the growth of electric
vehicles. It was only in the 1970s when the world was hit with the oil crisis,
people realized the increasing need for alternative energy technologies for
automobiles. Growing concerns about environmental pollution only enhanced
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the interest in Electric vehicles. Mr. Maini wanted to eliminate urban air pollution
and he looked for new technologies that can be cost effective. His dream was to
develop the first electric car in India. The REVA project was started in 1994.The
first Reva proto type was ready in mid 1996. It was internally funded. This
prototype was displayed in Bangalore in 1996-97 after extensive testing at the
ARAI, Pune.
Evolution of the idea: RECC is a joint venture between Bangalore based Maini
group and Amerigon electronic vehicle technologies (A.E.V.T. Inc.) of U.S.A.
Reva has built its reputation on leading rather than following technological
change. In line with their motto to introduce technology ahead of the world to
consumers in India the company has technical collaboration with world-class
companies. The company has collaboration with the following companies
Amerigon Electric Vehicle Technologies Inc., specializes in bringing
aerospace technology to the automobile industry.
Curtis Instruments Inc., USA, is a manufacturer of instrumentation, controls
and integrated systems for electric vehicles of all types. This has developed the
motor controller for the electric car
Tudor India Limited, a subsidiary of the largest and oldest Battery Company in
the world (located in the USA), provided the Prestolite batteries specially
manufactured for use in the Revas high-tech Power Pack.
Modular Power Systems USA, a division of TDI, is a world leader in Charger
and Power supplies. The Charger for Reva, which was developed by MPS, is
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now being made in India through a technical collaboration agreement they have
with the Maini Group. The main contribution of RECC is designing, developing
and manufacturing electric cars that are cost effective and easy to manufacture.
Learning strategies:Maintaining quality had always been an important issue for
the Maini group. Modeled on the zero principle zero defects, zero time delays
and zero inefficiencies - the Group has crafted a unique quality image for itself,
both in India and abroad. The Maini groups recognition for quality and reliability
include the ISO- 9000 Certificate for 3 of its group companies. All the
components of Reva are thoroughly inspected and only after due verification are
forwarded to the next stage of manufacture. Even though the first prototype of
Reva was ready in Mid-1996, it was introduced in to the market only after
extensive testing at the Automobiles Research Association of India (A.R.A.I.),
Pune for homologation.
RECCs product quality and reliability have helped it to secure several
International collaborations that include General Motors U. S. and Bosch
Germany.
R & D Strategy: The Maini group has always viewed technology and innovation
as the main driver of growth and profitability. The group has always focused on
innovation, technology, quality and reliability. The group has 2 in-house R&D
Centers, recognized by D.S.I.R. (Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research, Govt
of India). Reva has a 25 strong R&D team which is constantly striving to improve
the quality of product it is working to come out with a new car by the year-end.
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The company is also working on an enviable project of drive system for General
Motors. Keeping in trend with the international standards REVA spends almost
8% of its turnover on R&D. The R&D efforts have resulted in innovative
technologies that are patented. Apart from its design Reva deploys the following
3 key patent protected technologies in its electric car namely:
running chassis,
energy management system, and
climate Control system.
Market dynamics: Majority of the capital equipment is indigenously available
except for few sophisticated machines. This battery could be charged using a
220-volt, 15-amp power source. 227-kg is the payload. Reva was developed as
a completely indigenous car for India. Unlike conventional internal combustion
engine car which has more than 7000 components Reva has only 1000
components and more than 95% of these components are indigenously
manufactured. Few examples where RECC used their manufacturing philosophy
innovatively are use of color-impregnated panels to eliminate any painting at the
assembly stage. This construction method reduced capital costs by 40%. Opting
for a thermo-formed (rather than injection-molded) instrument panel, dispensed
with curved glass and winding windows it selected conventional lead-acid
batteries rather than new-generation lithium types. The car is shown in Fig. 9.
Institutional support: Reva received commendable support from the Department
of Information Technology, IISc. Bangalore. Reva also receives support from
Maini Info Solutions, a subsidiary of the Maini Group. On the financial front Reva
received financial support from Technology Development Board (India).
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According to the company Government support for electric vehicle industry is not
adequate. It is appropriate that this venture receives the support of the
government, since the technological performance of the Electric vehicle largely
meets the specifications. Technology Development Board gave RECC a new
venture loan of INR 185 million for the development and manufacturing.
Organizational strategy: The marketing strategy is aimed at developing a whole
new concept in city mobility non-polluting, noiseless, affordable personal
transportation for all ages. The company has targeted to sell 1,500-2,000 cars in
2002-2003. According to Mr. Maini ,Electric cars are appropriate in city
environments due to increased mobility, zero pollution, less parking space and
quiet operation and it is particularly tailor-made for countries like India due to low
running and maintenance cost. The feedback shows that for most buyers, Reva
is their second car, which they prefer to use in-city, while their regular vehicle is
used for long-distance trips. The company is also working on a platform for larger
electric cars.
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The deluxe version is expected to be launched by the end of this year while AC
version, with 15-20 per cent lower range than present 80 km, is also in the
pipeline. The 75 team strong R&D team at RECC is also working on heater
version and another one with cooled seats. There are also plans to expand the
Reva platform by launching another vehicle by year-end. In the five years since
its inception, the Reva project has cost US$20 million, with an additional US$5
million to put the car into production.
Features of REVA car are as follows:
running cost of 40 paisa per km.
priced at Rs 254000
zero pollution car.
seat two adults and two children vehicle
easy driving as it has no clutch or gears.
on a single charge, 'Reva' can be driven for 80 km.
two-door hatchback and
battery life span of 40,000 km which should last for 3-4 years in city driving
conditions.
Learning from the case study: The case was aimed at understanding the electric
vehicle industry in general and Reva Electric Car Company in particular. This
study on Reva gave an understanding as to how a company could leverage
technology to indigenously develop world class products. This innovative creation
from the Maini group was tremendously helped by Chetan Mainis previous
experience in electric vehicular technology. This is one of the biggest funded
projects that is supported by TDB.
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SHANTA BIOTECHNICS PVT LTD.
Shanta Biotechnics is engaged in the development, production and marketing of
biotechnology based human health care products. Shanta Biotechnics developed
Hepatitis B Vaccine. This is named Shanvac. Shanta Biotechnics was the first
Indian company in to use recombinant DNA to create a pharmaceutical product.
It is the first indigenously produced vaccine for Hepatitis B. With an estimated 42
million Hepatitis B Vaccine carriers a whopping four percent of the countrys
population India is the second large pool of carriers in the world.
Founders: The man behind Shanvac is Mr. Varaprasad Reddy, an electronic
engineer by training. He was working Defense Electronics Research Lab. Then
he started a battery making unit for supplying high power batteries to the Indian
Airforce. He had the urge to do something for India and also the urge to be an
entrepreneur. Mr. Varaprasad Reddy wanted to start a new industry that is more
challenging. Both innovation and entrepreneurship were his dreams. When Mr.
Reddy went to US people suggested that he should focus on biotechnology as
there are many new opportunities emerging. When he attended a workshop in
Europe someone mentioned about the need for vaccines in developing countries.
This immediately became a trigger for action, and he worked relentlessly. His
dream was to introduce affordable products that can have significant impact.
Venture capitalists: Mr. Reddy was looking for a venture capitalist. The Foreign
Minister of Oman H.E.Yusuf Bin Alwai visited Shantha Biotech when he came to
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Hyderabad. He liked the project and invested USD 1.3 million as an angel
investor. Then the project took off. In the meanwhile Technology Development
Board gave a loan of INR 85 million (USD 1.7 million), as the first stage and SBI
Mutual Funds invested US$11 million and acquired 6.9% stake in Shanta
Biotechnics. Subsequently TDB again gave a load of INR 180 million. In 2002
Shantabiotech achieved a sales turnover of INR 300 million (US$ 6 million).
Product and services: Shantha has a state of the art facility is equipped with
sophisticated instrumentation for industrial R&D in modern biotechnology.
Shantha Biotechnics is the largest bitotechnology company in India in the private
sector. Shanta developed Indias first genetically engineered r-DNA Hepatitis-B
Vaccine after five years of intense research. They developed Indias first
genetically engineered Interform alpha 2 b shanferon. Vision of shantha
Biotechnics is: to achieve breakthroughs in modern biologicals leading to
development of products and services that address critical healthcare needs at
affordable cost. Shantha Biotechnics has a strength of 376 people out of which
75 are R&D personnel. Shanta Biotechnics will be commencializing streptokinase
in the last quarter of sept 2002. In the next 2 years Shantha will commercialize
recombinant Erthyropoeitin, insulin G-CSF and, GM-CSF.
Shanta Biotechniques has a joint venture with East West Labs, USA for the
development of novel therapeutic monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of
different types of cancer. The targets that are being planned are
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non small cell lung cancer
breast cancer
pancreatic cancer
colon cancer and
melanoma
Shanta Biotechnics has patents for the following:
anti non small cell lung and colon cancer
anti pancreatic cancer, lung cancer and melanoma
anti pancreatic cancer and
anti colon and breast cancer.
It is a firm that is intensifying its drug discovery efforts.
Strategies and learning: Shantha Biotechnics moved quickly in the drug
discovery cycle, through intensive learning. Shanta Biotechnics has three
technological alliances that facilitated learning, namely
Shantha Marine Biotech has a joint venture with ABL Technologies to
focus on marine biotechnology products.
Shantha Biotech has tied up for Pfizer for marketing shanthas products
locally in India and in future in the global markets
Research alliance with International vaccine Institute, Korea for the
technologies for Typhoid vaccine.
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Shantha Biotechnics is planning to go for an IPO in the near future. Before that
they are building the product pipeline. For manufacturing Shantha Biotechnics
has entered into a joint venture agreement with Biocon, located at Bangalore.
The venture capitalist helped in getting a large investment from a Bank for
putting up manufacturing facilities against his personal guarantee.
KSHEMA TECHNOLOGIES
Kshema technologies was founded in 1997. It is one of the Indias first venture
capital funded software solutions companies. With an annual rate of more than
125% since inception, Kshema is the countrys fastest growing software
companies and has clients predominantly from global 1000 companies.
Founders: Kshema is promoted by A.R. Koppar, A.Mutalik and L.B. Joseph who
came together to realize a dream of creating an employee owned organization.
The first two are engineers. They earlier worked at Wipro at senior levels. The
dream was to create a firm that is innovative and ethical.
Venture Support: The three investors who invested in Kshema are:
Global Technology ventures
I L & FS Venture capital corporation ltd and
Citibank
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Global Technology Ventures have invested 50.88%, I L & F S Venture Capital
Corporation Ltd 12.69%, Citibank holds 4.61%. The software revenues in 2002
was Rs 560 million. Profit after taxation was Rs 122 million. Inspite of the poor
markets revenues didnt show any substantial decline.
Product and services: Kshemas Software Services is a firm that has 45 clients
from the Global 1000 (Business Week) firms.
Kshemas mature software development is backed by years of experience in
delivering software solutions in a global environment. The services are based on
object technologies, web technology, wireless solutions and automation.
Automotive embedded software, in-vehicle multimedia systems, embedded
technologies for handheld devices etc are some of the major technologies of
Kshema. Kshema has been at the forefront of handheld device evolution.
Kshema has been involved in some of the worlds first technology prototypes in
this area. Some of the pioneering work Kshema has done are
integration of Bluetooth communications module for PDA
design and development of a new generation of PDA and phone
bluetooth stack for handhelds
voice recognition integration for new generation devices and
word processor and spreadsheet applications for a PDA platform
Kshema has started providing bioinformatics services recently. Stimulation of
metabolic pathways using databases, datawarehouse application for genetic
sequencing etc are some of the applications. Kshema has recently developed a
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image enhancing and spot identification system to map coordinates of the protein
shots for robot excision.
Kshema has strong motivation systems for inducing learning. Kshema operates
on a customer centric virtual extension business model that ensures value at
every stage in its software development cycle. The three venture firms have been
able to increase the value creation in three ways, namely
continuous monitoring of business plans
helping to get business contacts from different countries and
providing funding quickly. In a shortest possible the venture came into
operation as one of the venture capitalists provided the necessary
infrastructure.
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CONCLUSIONS
The venture capital industry has started creating innovative firms in India. During
the last five years many new entrepreneurial firms have ventured into new
product development and contract research for global firms. Till then Indian firms
weak in new product development. Firms like Avesthagen, Strand Genomics and
Bharat Biotechnics have achieved high revenue levels through revenue from
contract research as well. Firms like Tejas Networks, Reva and Ittiam have
become product developers for the global market. Mindtree and Kshema have
grown rapidly by focusing on new high technology business segments. A
summary of the firms covered are presented in Table 12. Venture Capital
assisted firms are still in its infancy. Management buyouts and external corporate
venturing have started emerging indicating that off-shore funds are started
considering India as a potential opportunity. This will reduce the capital gap for
entrepreneurial firms. Major observations are given below:
1. Venture Capital is becoming a major mechanism for stimulating innovation
and entrepreneurial growth. In India, this is catalyzed by the rapid growth
in information technology. There is a strong need to enhance availability of
venture capital in developing countries as most of these risk averse but
awareness about the role of venture capital has been very limited. There
has to be systematic initiatives for simulating entrepreneurship through
use of venture funds. The distortions in the capital market due to over
regulations and multiple controls are also a problem that is hindering the
growth of VCs.
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2. Expertise needed for managing new ventures and managing venture
funds is yet to evolve in India. Most of the off-shore Funds have a strong
experiential base that is absent in local institutions. Off-shore Funds have
been able to provide support and business contacts. From the personal
interviews it is evident that off-shore funds are able to add more value to
the venture assisted firms through the provision of help in preparing
reliable and precise business plans. Entrepreneurs generally focus on
technical aspects and not on business success. Venture capitalists brings
the balance between business and technology so that innovation becomes
a commercial success.
3. Most of the new ventures have benefited from venture capital, especially
those supported by the off-shore funds. Three aspects of support provided
by VCF that adds value are:
monitoring the business plans
support for getting business contacts from other countries and
bringing an external perspective in the business plan.
4. Venture capital growth and industrial clustering have a strong positive
correlation. Foreign direct investment, starting of R&D centres, availability
of venture capital and growth of entrepreneurial firms are getting
concentrated into five clusters. The cost of monitoring and the cost of skill
acquisition are lower in clusters, especially for innovation. Entry costs are
also lower in clusters. Creating entrepreneurship and stimulating
innovation in clusters have to become a major concern of public policy
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makers. This is essential because only when the cultural context is
conducive for risk management venture capital will take-of. Clusters
support innovation and facilitates risk bearing. VCs prefer clusters
because the information costs are lower. Policies for promoting dispersion
of industries are becoming redundant after the economic liberalization.
5. An analysis of venture assisted firms clearly shows that the factors
contributing to the success of innovative firms are essentially three fold,
namely
strong experiential base
vision and urge to achieve something and
a realistic business plan.
6. Bank operated venture capital funds are relatively risk averse and they
have a weak experiential base. Local funds are focusing on software
services and retail business but not innovative products. The real growth
of venture capital in India started after the entry of off-shore venture funds.
India has become a preferred destination of venture funds in Asia.
7. The presence of an excellent academic research institutions is a
prerequisite for the success of venture firms in a location as it can
provided high quality manpower. In the case of Bombay, Madras,
Hyderabad, Bangalore and New Delhi the presence of research
institutions have facilitated the growth of venture supported firms.
8. One of the untraded externalities that stimulates venture growth is idea
entrepreneurship. Idea moves faster and evolves quickly in clusters.
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Venture capital growth has occurred in clusters in India like in US, Israel,
UK and Taiwan.
9. In developing countries venture funds are not fully evolved and, it may be
necessary to start public venture funds. Public venture funds can act as
seeds of entrepreneurship. Special attention may be essential for this so
that commercial and technical perspectives are integrated. In developing
countries public policy should support and evolve institutional systems for
stimulating public venture funds. The government supported quasi-venture
fund, namely Technology Development Board has been effective in
stimulating innovations in India. Good corporate governance of venture
funds is one of the critical success factors that has helped Technology
Development Board to select and support innovations.
To sum up, developing countries have to harmonize the capital market
requirements and venture capital needs so that they can stimulate
entrepreneurial firms that focus on high-tech innovations. Though most of
venture funds state that high technology is their priority only firms started by
experienced persons find support by VCFs. Capability for assessing venture
projects continues to be a weak area in the case of developing countries such as
India because of the lack of prior experience.
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