mGinger enables advertisements including offers, vouchers, news and more, sent in the form of SMS on consumers’ mobile phones. These advertisements are specific to consumer interests and demographics mentioned during sign-up and received only in the timings that consumers specify. An additional value-add for consumers, is the earning potential of receiving these advertisements, which is redeemed through a gift cheque from mGinger.

The susbcriber of mGinger gets 20 paisa per sms and can refer his / her friends and family on mGinger. For every advert that referred mobile receives, main subscriber gets 10 paisa and 5 paisa for every advert that friend’s friend receives. Thus mGinger aims to created a pyramid structure mobile advertising list by using referrals and incentive scheme ( smart way of using word of mouth publicity).

This service is akin to Chequemail.com which used to pay users for reading their email and used to sell advertising space. Chequemail which received funding from ICICI venture in dotcom haydays finally closed down (though domain is still active but has no website as there is no name server listed against it).

DFJ which is a early stage / seed stage investor has recently opened its Bangalore Office with Mohanjit Jolly as Director and Sateesh Andra as Venture partner. DFJ other investments in India are seventymm, Komli etc

GVK BIO started operations in 2001 at Hyderabad and has established itself as a leading Contract Research Organization in India. Currently GVK BIO is the only Indian CRO that provides an integrated service platform ranging from Informatics, MedChem and Biology services in Discovery research to Clinical Research and Data Management services on the Development side and further to Process Research and Custom Synthesis.

GVK Bio was G.V.K. Sanjav Reddy in 2001, while Dr D.S.Brar joined GVK Bio as promoter chairman in 2004. Previously Dr Brar played a significant role in building Ranbaxy (India’s largest Pharma Company) into a globally recognized Generics company with a pipeline of specialty and innovator (NCE) drugs. Dr. Brar is also involved with several international Pharma/Life-sciences companies in consulting/advisory role through Davix Management Services Pvt. Ltd

GVK BIO intends to use these funds to expand capacity in Drug Discovery services, build a state-of-the-art Campus at Hyderabad on a 25 acre site. provide new service offerings in Pre-clinical and Clinical space, and pursue growth opportunities through mergers and acquisitions.

Sequoia Capital has nominated Mr. Sandeep Singhal to the Board of GVK BIO.

Dimensions Consulting of Gurgaon were the advisors to GVK BIO for the transaction.

Ticketvala, headed by Harnath Lokanadham, aim to capture the unorganized bus ticketing system in India as road transport in India remains the largest mean of transportation. Further with improving road infrastructure, and increasing Volvo bus circuit, this segment is set to see much increased volumes.

Tickevala has also launched its call center services in both English and other local languages so as to capture non internet using population.

The other player in bus ticketing system in Redbus.in which is being mentored by the TiE-EAP (Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program).

RedBus claims to have the largest network of bus operators in their list (150 and growing) and some 2000 destinations across India. At present Redbus.in tickets can be booked at some 10,000 outlets.

Footprint Ventures, the investor in Ticketvala.com is the brainchild of Neill Brownstein, a co-founder of Bessemer Venture Partners. It aims to create an India–US–Israel triangle that brings together funds, entrepreneurs, technology and markets. The firm looks to put $2-4 million in lifestyle, retail, financial services, security, education, clean technology and life sciences.

As of now Footprint has funded two startups including ticketvala.com after going through some 150 proposals.

The investment by Capital18 will be used for scaling up operations( team expansion and probably locations) and fuel growth.

Interestingly Webchutney founders team also manages an incubation company “Goosefish Media Venture” where they aim to incubate a series of blogs/ websites dedicated to a particular niche area.

As quotes on Goosefish Media site :
“As dumb as it may sound: our publishing focus is founded with the idea of incubating a whole bunch of vertical content websites / blogs’ using a Nanopublishing model. We want to partner with good writers to write each of them, hopefully draw a lot of eyeballs and then sell advertising around it.”

And this is probably the real killer as Indian digital space is practically empty with hardly any big brand like Gigaom etc in this space and it looks like Webchutney team is going to get their next pot of Gold from Goosefish Media. As of now Goosefish has incubated Alootechie.com, Bombaybitch and JuxtConsult.

This news is bound to create excitement in Indian Internet market as it provides an important yard-stick to the ever-optimistic entrepreneurs, who are now bound to measure their own ventures in terms of Desimartini’s valuatuion.

Desimartini.com, launched by Pahwa Knowledge Based Services late last year, is funded by the Pahwa Group of Companies. It was claimed that Desimartini has a membership-base of around 250,000 with traffic of around 2.5 million page views a month.

The traffic numbers as claimed by Desimartini, if true, indicate a good traction for website, but somehow the actual traffic does not seem to be that high, as per external indicators.

Desimartini, which regularly advertises on TV, Internet and other medium, has an Alexa ranking of 77,467 while its Compete ranking is 889,553 with around 1000 US visitors per month. Incidentally, Alexa rankings overall are not considered trustworthy as they can be engineered to generate high ranking. Hence, generally speaking, a high Alexa rank doesn’t mean much, but a low Alexa rank certainly means that there is no big traffic on this site.

The sites which are in same Alexa league get traffic of around 600k to 800k page views a month with around 200k unique visitors a month and, hence, the claim of Desimartini having 2.5 million page views is highly suspect.

Hence, to think that a Fund Manager will pay around US $ 10 Million for a site with marginal traffic, no great brand loyalty (the site is just a year old), no great business model (just another social networking site), makes the whole thing a little suspicious, as it strongly suggests that either there is something more on the table beyond Desimartini.com, or HT Media for some reason is really desperate to get into action without wasting a day.

Further details of this deal will be available in some time, as HT Media, being a listed company, would be required to inform the Stock Exchange regarding this transaction.

The Hindustan Times Group had dabbled with Internet earlier as well in 2000 dotcom boom (almost near to the time when the great Internet bubble burst), where it hired a high-profile team from banking and consulting industry, and had a big-bang launch for go4i.com headed by Mr. Piyush Gupta. Go4i was launched in association with Chase Capital Partners and the HDFC Group. The Hindustan Times and Chase Capital Partners each held 38 percent in the venture, while the HDFC Group had 8 percent. The total investment in the venture in the initial phase was reported to be US $ 15 Millions.

Also, at that point of time, go4i.com had plans to launch some other portals – related to career (go4career.com), cricket (go4cricket.com), movie ticketing (go4ticket.com), and so on and so forth.

And for all those who care for historical data-keeping, this was the quotable quote as given in The Hindu in year 2000.

‘“We (go4i) are hopeful of a turnover of Rs. 30 Crores in the second year of operations,” Mr. Gupta said, adding that go4i.com would break even in the next two years, and become profitable in the year thereafter.

“We (go4i) are planning a public issue of the portal in the next couple of years. Whether to go for an overseas float or a domestic one would depend on the prevailing market conditions at that time,” he said.’

The above statements by Piyush Gupta were made in 2000 in a truly style of forward looking statements (this is another matter that they really turned out to be forward looking qs whole go4i venture was shut down after some time).

The fund and its portfolio companies will be advised by successful entrepreneurs and investors in the Technology, Media, Outsourced Services, Retail and Consumer sectors. The founders of the fund and its advisory companies include industry veterans and successful venture investors, Naren Gupta, Sandeep Singhal, and Suvir Sujan. Bill Davidow, Senior Executive, Intel and Co-founder of a highly successful venture fund is a special advisor to Nexus.

Naren Gupta founded embedded systems software company Integrated Systems Inc. in 1980 and was the President/CEO of the company through the IPO process for 15 years. Integrated Systems later merged with WindRiver Systems, where he serves as Vice Chairman. Naren also serves on the boards of some of the world’s most innovative technology companies such as RedHat and TIBCO. Over the last decade, Naren Gupta has invested in several successful technology ventures that include Speedera Networks, E-Tek Dynamics, Numerical Technologies and RightNow.

Sandeep Singhal co-founded the leading Indian Health Care outsourced services company, Medusind Solutions and is a well-recognized leader in Indian venture capital. Prior to Medusind, Sandeep Singhal founded eVentures India, a Venture Capital Fund that invested in Indian industry leaders including Makemytrip.com, Contest2win.com, Customer Asset (now part of FirstSource), Netmagic, and Mentorix.

Suvir Sujan co-founded Baazee.com, India’s leading e-commerce company that merged with eBay to form eBay India and has also been an active advisor and angel investor to consumer internet, wireless and retail ventures.

“After the first wave of investing in companies based on cost arbitrage, India is finally ready for venture capital in companies driven by innovation. Some of the best employees at companies in India such as Google, Microsoft and Intel are thinking about starting their own companies,” said Sandeep Singhal. “Moreover professionals in large Indian corporations and in companies around the world are stepping into Indian entrepreneurial ventures targeting the burgeoning domestic economy. They need risk capital; the timing to back them is now.”

“Smart entrepreneurs realize that they need more than just money,” said Suvir Sujan. “We are successful entrepreneurs who have founded, built and exited companies successfully in the technology, services and consumer arenas. Nexus India Capital truly understands the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurs and hopes to play an active role in helping companies succeed. Our entire team of advisors in India and Silicon Valley is accessible to all the entrepreneurs we back for support on strategy, operations, organizational building, sales, etc”.

Nexus has already invested in Dimdim- Free web meeting software and mobile2win – a company from Contest2win stable.

“We are delighted and honored to partner with these two great firms as we build innovative products for online publishers and advertisers,” said Komli’s CEO and Founder, Amar Goel.

In conjunction with this investment, Komli is introducing the Komli Premium Network, today. The Komli Premium Network works with premium quality publishers, helping marketers interact with consumers in a more targeted and rich way online. The Network has especially large reach in India. Rajat Gandhi, Dy. General Manager of the Times Group, one of India’s largest media houses, said, “Komli has been a great marketing partner of Times’ leading Internet brands — TimesJobs, SimplyMarry, and magicbricks. We have been marketing our brands via the Komli Premium Network to engage with consumers in new and relevant ways, and are thrilled with the results. Overall, the number of leads, clicks, and awareness that Komli has driven for us has been very significant.”

As per unconfirmed reports GVFL has made an exit from ICENET, the leading ISP from Gujarat though no details about valuations or deal are available.

IceNet is a joint venture with equity participation between the Elecmech Group of India and the Eclipse Micro Computer Group of USA.

IceNet was India ‘s first Private Digital ISP, with dedicated Optic Fibre Cables, Digital Modems, Fully Automated Helpdesk, a Users-to-Lines Ratio.

IVCA has said that the said proposal with regard to the tax pass through provision for Venture Capital funds will cause irreparable harm to innovation and entrepreneurship in India and seriously discourage the growth of venture capital in India which is vital for the myriads of start ups to achieve their full potential and enable the Indian economy to continue its growth rate. The provision is also unlikely to garner any significant tax revenues as all foreign venture funds will bypass the issue by investing through tax treaty friendly companies, and the impact will only be on the fledgling domestic venture capital industry which any way represents only a small fraction of the total investments.

The Government proposes to restrict the pass through to VC funds operating only in half a dozen areas specified by government. This measure is flawed on two counts. Firstly, nowhere in the world does government seek to be clairvoyant and direct in which areas of innovation venture capital are allowed to operate. This is an issue best left to entrepreneurs and people who are willing to invest in them. As an example, if government had drawn up such a list two decades ago, computer software would not have been on it. This list has some obvious, inexplicable exclusion such as telecom, value added services in the wireless arena, media, etc. But the main point is that no one, certainly not government, is competent to draw up a list of what are the promising areas of tomorrow. If the government’s intention was to exclude a specific sector then that would have been better though not still a good, approach.

The second issue comes from Government implying that the tax pass through represents some sort of incentive. The fact is that the pass through only eliminates double taxation. Worldwide, it is a standard practice that venture capital funds are not taxed twice and considered pass through vehicles, with the tax being paid in the hands of investors. In fact, in most countries such pass through is routinely available to any pool or group of investors even if they do not represent a registered venture capital fund. Even in India, any non corporate vehicle, such as a partnership, is not taxed twice.

Section 10 (23FB) and Section 115U were introduced precisely to bring this treatment on par with rest of the world and as a result venture capital investments in India grew from a billion dollars in 2000 to USD 7 bn. last year, representing perhaps the biggest single element of FDI but equally creating several new enterprises and enabling existing Indian companies to have the funds for foreign acquisitions.

The recent proposal by finance ministry has been widely criticized and is expected to further dampen the growth of entrepreneurship and startups as recent provisions will choke domestic funds and will further dry the avenues available to local entrepreneurs who any way don’t get much support due to lack of well developed venture fund industry.

Does the present Congress led govt has something against entrepreneurs ?? If one goes by the series of events has they have unfolded in past 2 years then it does look like that Govt is not very fond of venture funds and entrepreneurs.

Earlier the Govt. increased service tax rate to 12% and brought small services like website advertising, hosting etc under service tax bracket.

Then later on RBI ( Reserve bank of India) removed priority sector status to Venture Capital Industry and further increased the risk capital allocation to 150% for banks investing in venture capital. The moves immediately dried up the availability of capital from Indian Banking sector to Venture capital industry.

Now in a further move to limit access of capital to venture fund, in Union Budget 2007-08, Govt has restricted benefit of “Pass-through Benefits” available to Venture funds to certain sectors only.

Excerpts from the speech of Mr P. Chidambaram, FM India
“
173. Venture capital funds are a useful source of risk capital, especially for start-up ventures in the knowledge-intensive sectors. Since such funds enjoy a pass-through status, it is necessary to limit the tax benefit to investments made in truly deserving sectors. Accordingly, I propose to grant pass-through status to venture capital funds only in respect of investments in venture capital undertakings in biotechnology; information technology relating to hardware and software development; nanotechnology; seed research and development; research and development of new chemical entities in the pharmaceutical sector; dairy industry; poultry industry; and production of bio-fuels. In order to promote business tourism, I also propose to allow this benefit to venture capital funds that invest in hotel-cum-convention centres of a certain description and size.”

Now probably we know why India has only a small no of successful entrepreneurs compared to US and why there are not more startups coming up ??