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Info Edge India Ltd, the owners of Naukri.com, is having its board meeting today to consider raising funds. In an announcement to the stock exchanges, the company said that the meting is held to "discuss raising of capital through various available mechanisms in India and overseas". It's not clear what they will use the capital for. Interestingly, Naukri had raised Rs 174 crore last year via an IPO, and good chunk of it is invested for treasury operations. The company had set apart of Rs 30 crore for M&As and investments. The company is backed by Sherpalo and Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers. ICICI Venture had exited Naukri completely through secondary market transactions to Fidelity Fund and others.
Naukri has also informed the stock exchanges that it had invested $500K in an Indian education portal StudyPlaces.com Inc, USA. The investment is done by a Mauritius based subsidiary of Info Edge. The company's total commitment in StudyPlaces is said to be $1 million.

Finally, after ending days of speculation, Citigroup Inc. has named former Morgan Stanley President Vikram Pandit as its new CEO. The Indian born Pandit succeeds Charles O. Prince, who stepped down last month after the banking giant wrote off at least $9 billion of mortgage losses following the sub-prime crisis. He takes over immediately.
Win Bischoff, the acting CEO, will be the new chairman, replacing Robert Rubin, the board member and the former U.S. Treasury secretary who became chairman temporarily. Earlier this year, Citi bought out Pandit's Old Lane Fund (set up in 2006) for about $800 million, and hired Pandit, 50, (as well as his top team) as its head of private-equity and hedge-fund investments.
What is interesting is Citi has chosen financial expert Pandit (he is considered very good at quant) to get itself out of the mess. Pandit is essentially an institutional trader and does not have experience in running a consumer facing finance business, which Citi really is. It remains to be seen how Pandit can run a large banking conglomerate like Citigroup as opposed to his hedge fund trading experience.
Bloomberg has short bio of the man. Pandit, the son of an Indian businessman, went to the US at age of 16 in 1973. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at Columbia University, where he also got a Ph.D. in finance. He worked as an investment banker and trading manager at Morgan Stanley for 22 years before quitting in 2005 following a power struggle with then-CEO Philip Purcell.

BNP Paribas Securities Asia has announced today the launch of a 27-people strong securities research team in India, which will be headed by Praveen Chakravarty, Chief Operating Officer and Acting Head of Equity Research for BNP Paribas Securities India. The company had earlier announced the appointment of Abhijit Raha (formerly CLSA Asia) as the CEO of BNP Paribas Securities India, a joint venture between BNP Paribas Securities Asia and Geojit Securities. Raha is also the Head of Institutional Equities and Corporate Finance for BNP Paribas, India.
The new onshore research operation based in Mumbai is the second-largest research platform after the Hong Kong and China team. Chakravarty moved from Thomas Weisel International's India office, which was set up by him in Mumbai two years ago. A large section of his former team at Thomas Weisel was believed to have moved along with him to BNP Paribas Securities India. Thomas Weisel Partners is a San Francisco based investment bank.
The new setup will have 10 writing analysts and 13 research associates, and the firm plans to initially cover 100 Indian stocks by October 2008, according to a release. BNP Paribas Securities Asia will now be a full-fledged securities house with trading capabilities on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange.

ICICI Venture is on a hiring mode at the senior level. After wooing back Jayanta Banerjee from Lehman Brothers, the Mumbai-based buyout fund has roped in former Pepsi CEO in India Rajeev Bakshi as the joint managing director. According to The Economic Times, Bakshi will take charge in February or March next year. Bakshi was the CEO of Cadbury in India in the 1990s, and had joined Pepsi in 2001. He was moved out of India to the beverage giant's Hong Kong office last year following a massive reshuffle. (Now Bakshi has followed his former rival Sanjiv Gupta, ex-Coke CEO in India, who joined Indivision Capital as a managing director after quitting the company).
ICICI Venture CEO and MD Renuka Ramnath has been quoted as saying by the paper: “It is consistent with our strategy of consolidating diversity of experience within ICICI Venture. We look at Rajeev Bakshi as one with enough management experience in terms of running companies and dealing with a whole host of issues as a leader.”
ICICI Venture is planning to become India's largest fund with $10 billion under management by 2010. Currently, it has about about $2.5 billion under management.
Meanwhile, there are reports that Jagdish Khattar, the outgoing managing director of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, is considering a position in a private equity fund. Mint quotes Khattar as saying: “It’s one of the several options I’m considering...I haven’t made up my mind.” Earlier reports suggested that Khattar might turn an entrepreneur, and he was looking at a multi-brand auto sales and service chain along the lines of the AutoNation of the US. It seems Khattar's plans are not yet firmed up.
Interestingly, some large private equity funds like KKR and Cerberus Capital Management are looking to set up shop in India, and are probably scouting for CEOs. The buzz is that Citigroup's Sanjay Nayar is being considered for KKR's top job in India, as we reported a few days ago.
Several Indian top execs were hired by global funds. Vivek Paul, former vice chairman of Wipro Ltd, joined Texas Pacific Group as a global partner. Akhil Gupta, former COO of Reliance Communications, joined as head of private equity fund Blackstone in India. Akshay Bhargava, the former head of Infosys BPO (earlier known as Progeon) has joined 3i as a partner. Rajiv Kaul, former Microsoft MD in India, had also joined 3i, but quit soon after.

Jayanta Banerjee has reportedly quit Lehman Brothers where he joined earlier this year as MD of private equity. The Economic Times reports that Banerjee has headed back to ICICI Venture, his earlier employer, in a "larger firm wide role involving capital raising and other corporate responsibilities".
But what is interesting is the private equity circles in Mumbai are abuzz with rumours that Amit Chandra, former partner at New Silk Route Private Equity, will be joining a leading private equity fund (it's part of a large bank, and no prizes for guessing) as its CEO. Apparently, the current head of the fund may move to the parent company in a senior role. The next move of Chandra, once considered a star banker at DSP Merrill Lynch, will be closely watched anyway. Watch this space.

Exclusive: It's known that global buyout fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) is considering setting up an India office, but what is not known is who is heading it. Industry sources told VC Circle that Sanjay Nayar, Citigroup's India boss, is being considered for the job. This information could not be verified from the bank nor Nayar, however, highly placed sources said that Nayar could be headed to KKR.
Till now, the recently ousted Citigroup Inc CEO Chuck Prince was said to be holding Nayar back. Now that Prince has been removed from the job, it's likely that can make Nayar's decision faster.
Last month, reports suggested that KKR had sounded of a few law firms in India for setting up an office. Once KKR comes, that would complete the roster of PE biggies in India - which include TPG, Blackstone and Carlyle, among other large funds.
Since it was founded in 1976, KKR has done some 150 transactions with an aggregate enterprise value of over $318 billion. As of June 30, 2007, KKR’s equity investments were valued at over $78 billion on over $31 billion of invested capital, a multiple of 2.5 times, the website claims.
KKR has done only one deal in India, though. It bought out Flextronics Software, the software business of Flextronics International, for $900 million last year. It was the first leveraged buyout deal in India. KKR interestingly did this deal out of its international offices. The firm has six offices worldwide - New York, Menlo Park, Paris, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Exclusive: We heard about this last week from our sources. It turns out that veteran investment banker turned private equity investor Amit Chandra has left New Silk Route or NSR Advisors. The fund was co-founded by ex-Mckinsey chairman Rajat Gupta, Parag Saxena of Vedanta Capital, and Chandra himself. NSR has $1 billion under management, and Parag Saxena recently said that they plan to hike the fund size to $1.5 billion (a 70 per cent of which will be invested in India).
Chandra is believed to have quit after it turned out that he was only one among the equals managing the fund in India (which means your economic interest in the firm may also be equal). The other partners of NSR in India are Anand Dorairaj, Darius Pandole, Vivek Seth and Jacob Mathews.
Chandra left a 13-year top ranking investment banking career at DSP Merrill Lynch last year to join New Silk Route. He was expected to be heading Indian operations. It's not known what Chandra's plans are. At NSR, Chandra was instrumental in doing deals like Aster Infrastructure and Aster Tower. The fund has also invested in INX Media, the upcoming TV network.
The 39-year old had worked briefly as a consultant in 1993-94, and before his MBA, he worked for Larsen & Toubro, a leading Indian engineering and construction company.
At DSPML, Chandra’s main role was to build relationships, and he had executed some of the largest deals for the firm. Chandra joined the board of DSPML in 2004. He received his MBA in Finance and Strategy from Boston College and holds a Bachelors Degree Engineering (Electrical), from VJTI (University of Bombay).

Optical networking company Tejas Networks has appointed Rangnath Salgame, an ex- Cisco official, as its new president. Prior to joining Tejas, Salgame was with Cisco Systems as president - global projects. Founded in 2000, the Rs 235 crore company has so far raised more than $70 million from funds like Intel Capital, Sandstone Capital, Battery Ventures, Sun Technologies, Mayfield Fund, IL&FS and Goldman Sachs. The company plans to go for listing in th enext one year.
Sify Technologies has announced Vijay Kumar as the new CFO of the company. After a 7-year stint with Sundaram Finance Services Ltd, Vijay Kumar left them as Asst. General Manager (Investment Banking) to set up his independent audit and consultancy practice. Last November, the company's earlier CFO Durgesh Mehta had left to pursue other opportunities. Pijush Kanti Das, president of its Access Media unit, was the company's CFO in the interim.

Bessemer Venture Partners, the US venture capital fund which recently earmarked $350 million for India from its latest $1 billion fund, has appointed semiconductor industry veteran Devesh Garg as a Managing Director of its India practice. Garg joins nine others including five partners in the Mumbai team of Bessemer, one of the oldest US venture capital firms.
He joined Bessemer in 2003 as an Operating Partner, and was also most recently the founding CEO for the Bessemer-funded semiconductor start-up, Tilera. Prior to joining Bessemer, Garg has worked in companies like Broadcom, Synopsys, LSI Logic, National Semiconductor, Bechtel, and Raychem.
Bessemer had recently closed a $1 billion global fund with $350 million earmarked for investments in India. Since opening the India office in 2003, Bessemer has invested in 17 Indian companies which include broking firm Motilal Oswal, hospitality chain Sarovar Hotels, air conditioning components company Lloyd Electric & Engineering, and auto components maker Rico Auto, engineering services company Shriram EPC.

Among 10 promotions announced globally by private equity firm General Atlantic LLC include the elevation of Raul Rai and Sunish Sharma to the posts of Managing Director in Mumbai. Rai joined General Atlantic's Mumbai office in 2005 from UBS in New York where he was Managing Director and Global Co-Head Software Investment Banking. He is an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and has previously worked with Goldman Sachs in New York and London.
Sunish Sharma joined General Atlantic in January 2004 from McKinsey & Co. He has served on the board of Sharekhan, while he is on the boards of Hexaware, Infotech Enterprises and IBS Software. He is an IIM, Kolkata, alumnus.
General Atlantic had early last month appointed former McKinsey India chairman Ranjit V Pandit as managing director in India. Abhay Havaldar was the only MD till then.