(Guest Column: Shantanu Surpure, Managing Attorney/Advocate at Sand Hill Counsel, a Mumbai and Silicon Valley-based law firm, writes on the Budget 2008-09 and what it means for the PE/VC ecosystem. Shantanu was assisted by advocate Anand Kumar of Sand Hill Counsel.)
While today’s Budget had much for the rural sector including announcements regarding debt relief, the [...]
Exclusive: Bangalore-based private equity firm Shyam Equities Pvt Ltd is building up a media portfolio. After investing Rs 100 crore in Delhi based India TV (of Rajat Sharma) recently, the fund has invested around Rs 13 crore in Ahmedabad-based public listed firm Sambhaav Media, which publishes Gujarati newspaper. As of Thursday, Sambhaav Media had a [...]
As the commodity trading gets mainstream, the government sees an opportunity to tax them. The budget has introduced commodity transaction tax for futures. This is something like securities transaction tax introduced on stock trading a couple of years ago. Besides this, the government has also brought the commodity bourses like NCDEX, MCX and NMCEIL under [...]
There is some good news for personal income tax payers in the lower end of the bracket. The tax exemption has hiked from Rs 1,10,000 to Rs 1,50,000. And for women, the tax exemption has hiked to Rs 180,000, while for senior citizens, it has been hiked to 225,000. That leaves more money in the [...]
Finance Minister P Chidambaram has set a populist tone for his fifth and pre-election Union Budget (the next Union General elections are expected in early next year). One of the key announcements is a complete waiver of loans to small and marginal farmers. He has also announced a one-time settlement of loans for all other [...]
The Union Budget 2008-09, India’s most important economic policy document, which is being presented today in the Parliament. We will be covering the most important policy announcements with respect to the investment community and its implications through out the day. In the early part of his ongoing speech, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that the [...]
ICICI Venture has struck a PIPE deal to acquire 14.99 per cent stake in Arrow Webtex, which is into a niche sector of textile. The exact deal value is not known but if the current market price of the listed firm is taken as a benchmark, ICICI Venture would have picked the stake for around [...]
VC Circle catches up with Sandeep Murthy, CEO of online travel agency Cleartrip, which just announced (see our detailed story) series C financing from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mahindra Group. DFJ has led the round with $10 million, while Mahindra and existing investors (Sherpalo and Kleiner Perkins) will together put in $8.5 million. The company [...]
Dabur Pharma Ltd, an anti-cancer drug company carved out from the parent company, Dabur India, is considering a stake sale to a private equity investor or an overseas drugmaker, The Economic Times reported. The New Delhi-based company is in talks with a German company for a possible sell out, the newspaper said, without giving details. [...]
After inking one of the largest deals in the Indian media and entertainment sector, the UTV group promoter Ronnie Screwvala is now looking at selling a stake in his news broadcasting venture UTV News Ltd. The group parent company UTV Software had received Rs 805 crore from Walt Disney which picked up an additional stake [...]
Exclusive: This is one news we have been sitting on for the last two weeks. Here is the scoop as the company reveals the details to us officially. Cleartrip, India’s leading online travel portal, has landed $18.5 million funding in Series C from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mahindra Group. DFJ has led the round with [...]
It seems US sub-prime crisis is turning out to be a boon rather than a bane for fundamentally stronger markets in Asia. A host of private equity biggies - like Carlyle and JPMorgan - are now training their investment flows towards high growth markets in Asia - like China and India. According to a Bloomberg [...]
Gerken Capital, a US-based privately held firm specialising in managing and advising alternative asset funds, is planning to launch an India focused hedge fund with primary strategy of investing in listed companies. According to a media report, the fund coud invest upto 20 per cent of its corpus into unlisted entities in India both through [...]
Millennium Spire, a global real estate fund, entered India a year ago. For a start, the Singapore-domiciled fund (with an office in Delhi) has committed $50 million investment in four projects - three in the Delhi and National Capital Region and one in Coimbatore. But the firm’s second fund is looking to invest $1 billion [...]
The Cleantech Group, which is a network of investors and companies in the cleantech industry, has set up shop in India. So far it had only presence in North America, China and Europe. Leading venture capitalist Vinod Khosla will serve as Chair and Jaswinder Kaur, executive director of the Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA) in [...]
