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Norwest Hires Goldman Banker To Lead Growth Capital, PIPE Investments

By Madhav A Chanchani

  • 16 Oct 2008

Norwest Venture Partners India has hired a senior banker from Goldman Sachs to lead up the firm's growth capital investments in the country. NVP India has hired Sohil Chand, who was an executive director in Goldman Sachs' Asian Special Situations Group in Mumbai. Chand is appointed as a Managing Director of NVP India based in Mumbai.

NVP's move is in tandem with many other Silicon Valley based VCs operating in India. The firms liek Sequoia Capital, Mayfield, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners have either moved or in the process of moving into growth capital investing.

Chand, interestingly, has been focussing on PIPE investments at Goldman, and has about 10 years of financial, investment banking and private equity investment experience. According to a release,  Chand will focus on making growth equity investments in Indian companies across a wide range of sectors such as financial services, infrastructure, financial services, and manufacturing.

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Till now, NVP’s investments in India were in the technology, communications and outsourcing sector. The fund's current India portfolio includes outsoucing firm Adventity, travel portal Yatra, and mobile & digital entertainment company Mobile2win.

"NVP also knows how to be opportunistic during challenging economic times. We are currently seeing a number of interesting opportunities to invest in strong companies which are currently undervalued in today's markets based on their underlying fundamentals,” said Sohil Chand.

NVP shifting to growth capital investing is general trend that has been noticed in the Silicon Valley funds operatinf in India. Another fund which has recently decided to do late stage deals is Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). The Silicon Valley fund has decided to be a stage and sector agnostic player. It is also looking at sectors such as healthcare, education, retail, entertainment and logistics.

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Sequoia Capital India was the first VC firm in India to shift to growth capital investments and pre-IPO deals. It recently raised its second growth fund at $725 million, in addition to a $400 million fund it raised in 2006. Matrix Partners India expanded its existing fund of $150 million to $450 million to include growth capital investments.

Promod Haque, Managing Partner, NVP, said. “NVP India will continue to invest in early and mid stage companies, and with the help of Sohil, we will now capitalise on the tremendous opportunities we're seeing in growth equity in India,” he added.

Norwest already has Niren Shah as a managing director In India and Mohan Kumar as an executive director.

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