eIndia zips up closure with $18 million in the purse

Priya Srinivasan in Mumbai

Mumbai-based eIndia Venture Fund has received commitments to the tune of $18 million from overseas individuals and corporates. This signifies the first closure for the proposed $60 to $100 million fund.

Speaking with eFE, Mr Mehool Parekh, co-founder of eIndia Venture Management said one of the main investors in the tranche was the Singapore-based manufacturing and trading company Comcraft which has operations in about 40 countries. eIndia Venture Management is a JV between the $6 billion Boston-based private equity firm Advent International and Mr Mehool Parekh (who was earlier with the View Group) and Mr Nilesh Mehta (formerly with Meghraj Financial Services).

Advent International has a minority stake in the JV - eIndia Venture Management. The Boston based firm has not made any capital investment in the eIndia fund which is being run by this Joint Venture company. “Advent has however referred all the investors to us and will also help us manage the fund,” explains Mr Parekh.

Advent International has financed over 500 companies globally, more than 125 of which have completed IPOs.

eIndia is already in the process of evaluating investments and will make its first announcement shortly, according to Mr Parekh. “We will be focussing on the technology, media and telecom segments and will invest in Indo-US cross border ventures,” Mr Parekh said. He added that the fund’s first investment was in a US-based company with backend operations in India.

eIndia plans to make mezzanine stage investments and is looking at an average deal size of about $3 million. “We will make early stage investments only when we are very confident about the management team,” Mr Parekh added.

The fund will have a life span of about 9 years and the team is looking at about 15 to 20 investments totally.