Telangana Based My Home Group Plans $75M Fund to Invest in StartupsMy Home group, Telangana's largest business house, is preparing to set up a Rs 500 crore equity fund to invest in startups. "We may begin the fund with around Rs 100 crore and expand it to around Rs 500 crore over the next five years," founder Jupally Rameswar Rao told ET in an interview.
The Hyderabad-headquartered group has interests in real estate, cement and power businesses. The group has formed a dedicated research wing comprising chartered accounts, finance professionals, legal professionals and analysts to explore business opportunities and has already invested in a few.
"The dedicated research and investment team will take up due diligence of startups as well as scaled-up businesses. Pharmaceuticals is one of the areas that we think is worth exploring among the scaled-up businesses," Rao said.
Zoomcar Plans to Raise $25M from Ford, Reliance and SequoiaSelf-driving car startup, Zoomcar, is planning to raise at least $25 million from investors that includes Ford Smart Mobility, Reliance Venture Asset Management and Sequoia Capital. This will be a Series C fundraising round.
Zoomcar had raised $11 million from Sequoia Capital, Empire Angels and NGP in July. In 2014, it had raised $8 million from Sequoia with participation from Mohandas Pai, and Abhay Jain, head of corporate affairs at Manipal Group, among others.
Greg Moran, co-founder & chief executive officer, told DEALSTREETASIA that the round has not closed yet.
Big Data Analytics Company Teradata Acquires Big Data PartnershipBig data analytics company Teradata has announced the acquisition of London-based firm Big Data Partnership to broaden its open source analytics services across international marketplace, including in Asia, as per ET report.
Big Data Partnership has expertise in disruptive technologies, including Apache Hadoop and helps its clients discover how to become more data driven and data savvy through data science and the adoption of the latest big data technologies.
The company will now join Teradata's Think Big consulting practice to accelerate Think Big's expansion of open source consulting services internationally.
Agriculture Supply Chain startup Lemon Leaf Bags Angel Funding Delhi-based RP2 Ventures Pvt. Ltd, which runs fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain venture Lemon Leaf, has raised its first round of external funding from two angel investors.
Praveen Kumar, the head of operations at the firm told VCCircle, the funding has been raised mainly to set up the company’s sole processing facility at Dwarka in southwest Delhi. The facility has a capacity of processing 50,000 kg of products a day.
Kumar said the startup mobilised nearly Rs 90 lakh ($133,000) from Tushar Gupta and Sourav Sahani, the founders of supermarket chain Daily Delite.
Apollo Global Invests $60M in Noida Based Developer Logix GroupThe US-based private equity major Apollo Global Management has invested Rs 400 crore ($60 million) in Noida-based developer Logix Group through a structured finance transaction.
The capital will enable Logix to complete construction of all its exiting residential and commercial projects.
Shakti Nath, chairman and managing director, Logix Group, told VCCircle, “It is a structured debt transaction at holding company level. We have pledged some shares and also given some projects as collateral.”
This does not entail an entity level stake for the investor, he added.
Amazon Launches Subscription Service Prime in IndiaeCommerce company Amazon India has launched its much-awaited membership programme Amazon Prime for Indian customers.
Amazon Prime promises to deliver products ordered to member customers
within a day or two. In India, the service has been launched in over 100 cities and will be available for eligible products, as per VCCircle report. There is no limit to how many times a customer can avail of the Amazon Prime services.
Amazon, however, is not the first e-commerce company to offer Indian customers a one-day delivery service. In 2014, Flipkart introduced Flipkart First, an annual paid subscription service that offered customers exclusive benefits and priority service. At the time of launching the service, Flipkart offered 75,000 randomly chosen customers a free three month subscription.
NDMC Clears the Plan for Incubation Centre to Encourage StartupsNDMC has cleared the plan for first incubation centre to encourage startups in collaboration with Software Technology Parks of India under the Atal Innovation Mission of government of India.
Chairman Naresh Kumar said, initially 20 companies will be taken under the umbrella and the council will provide basic amenities and encourage entrepreneurs to nurture their idea.
As per TOI report, the incubation center will have 100 plug and play workstations, dedicated meeting rooms, training rooms, libraries, conference rooms, special platform for special events with the facility of back-up audio-visual.
Amplus Capital Raises $30M to Mark First Close Under Amplus Realty Fund – II Real estate-focused private equity firm Amplus Capital Advisors has raised Rs 200 crore ($30 million) to mark first close under Amplus Realty Fund – II. A majority of investors of Amplus Realty Fund – I have participated in the second fund with increased commitments, managing director Anuranjan Mohnot told VCCircle.
The new fund is focused on early-stage equity investments in mid-sized residential real estate projects with execution period of 36-42 months and would invest to pick a majority stake. It is looking at an investment ticket size of Rs 20-40 crore per transaction in major metros. The fund is already in talks for its first investment with projects in Pune and Mumbai.
Motilal Oswal Real Estate Raises Rs 800 Cr as Part of Third Real Estate FundMotilal Oswal Real Estate, the private equity real estate fund of Motilal Oswal Group, has raised over Rs 800 crore to invest in residential projects of developers in Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Delhi-National Capital Region, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.
The money, as part of its third real estate fund, has been raised from high networth individuals and family offices. The fund set up as an alternative investment fund, or AIF category II, will target a gross internal rate of return of 23-25% from its investments. The funds will have a tenure of five years from final close and two extensions of one year each, as per ET report.
Swiss Luxury Leather Goods Maker Bally in Talks with Reliance for India Retail Swiss luxury leather goods maker Bally, which has terminated its retail agreement with Bird Group, is in talks with Reliance Brands for retailing in India, as reported by ET.
Reliance Brands also retails other luxury brands like Ermenegildo Zegna and Brooks Brothers in India “For most retailers, the rentals are extremely high. It was not making sense commercially. Even if we were to triple our sales, which seemed unlikely considering the footfalls in a mall like Emporio (in New Delhi), we could not have made money," said Ankur Bhatia, executive director of Bird Group, which also retails Porsche Design in India.
"We shut down the Palladium store in Mumbai last year. We are going to shut down the DELHI store at the end of September. We are terminating the agreement."
