January 31, 2006
Chennai, India

Contact Information:

Arun Natarajan
Tel: +91-98410-10521
Email: arun@ventureintelligence.in

VCs invest $1.5 B in Indian-founded cos. in the US during 2005

Chennai, INDIA: Private Equity and Venture Capital firms invested about US$1.5 billion in 125 Indian founded companies in the US during 2005, according to data from Venture Intelligence India (http://www.ventureintelligence.in), a division of TSJ Media. Of these, 63 companies closed rounds of over $10 million. The previous year had witnessed 129 such companies raising $1.6 billion. 

The largest single investment during 2005 was the $150 million raised by Harpinder Madan-co-founded FiberTower Corp., a San Francisco, CA-based provider of infrastructure and services for cellular networks. The latest round, which takes FiberTower’s total financing to $225 million, was led by existing investor Crown Castle International with participation from other existing investors including Oak Investment Partners, Tudor Investment Corp., Goldman Sachs and Meritech Capital Partners 

Indian-founded companies that raised funding during 2005 were led by the 34 Communications Technology companies that raised $545 million, followed by 26 Enterprise Software companies that raised $207 million.

M&A Deals

Over 30 Indian-founded companies in the US were acquired during 2005, six of them for over $100 million. 

The single largest deal was the April acquisition of Ajay Chopra-co-founded Pinnacle Systems by Nasdaq-listed Avid Technology for $462 million. Mountain View, CA-based and Nasdaq-listed Pinnacle's digital media solutions are used in broadcast, video and audio editing, DVD and CDR authoring and on the Internet. 

Networking equipment giant Cisco Systems acquired five Indian-founded companies for almost $700 million during 2005, the Venture Intelligence India study revealed. Ajay Mishra-co-founded Airespace, a San Jose, CA-based provider of enterprise wireless LAN products, was acquired by Cisco Systems for about $450 million in February. Founded in 2001, Airespace had raised $58 million from Battery Ventures, Fidelity Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Storm Ventures, Hotung Capital and KTB Ventures. Cisco’s shopping list also included Sheer Networks, FineGround Networks, NetSift and Nemo Systems.

About Venture Intelligence India

Venture Intelligence IndiaVenture Intelligence India, a division of Chennai, India-based TSJ Media Pvt. Ltd., is the leading source of information on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. For more information, please visit www.ventureintelligence.in