Intel Capital, the corporate venturing division of US-listed semiconductor company Intel, has reinvested in Vriti Infocom, an India-based education company, as it prepares a host of flotations.
Vriti has raised $5m in its series B round with Japan state-backed venture capital firm Jafco Asia leading. Murli Ravi, senior investment manager for south Asia at Jafco and who now joins Vriti’s board of directors, said: "Within India alone, 60 million students prepare for curricular, competitive entrance and professional exams every year, and are served by more than 200,000 schools and 300,000 coaching houses and tutors."
Intel Capital had previously invested in the company’s $2.5m series A round in 2008 and made a follow-on investment.
Sudheer Kuppam, managing director of Intel Capital Asia-Pacific (pictured), said: "Creating a robust education delivery infrastructure is key to India’s sustainable growth and Vriti’s technology platform provides easy access to quality content and personalized assessment to a plethora of education providers and aspiring students, even in the remotest corners of India. We hope that this investment, along with increasing broadband penetration, will enable Vriti’s ‘platform as a service’ business model to witness rapid growth."
India recently auctioned use of part of its radio frequency for third generation telephone and broadband wireless use. In an interview with local news provider Business Standard, Intel Capital, which has been investing in India since 1998 and since 2005 from a $250m dedicated fund, said it would focus on investing in services firms that can cater to three screens, mobile, computer and television. Intel Capital has invested $23m in three Indian firms, Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), July Systems and KLG Systel this year.
For exits, Kuppam earlier in the month told news provider Mint that flotations on stock exchanges were the only liquidity route as mergers and acquisitions were slow.
Intel Capital has listed 123Greetings.com and Persistent Systems in India this year and Kuppam said another four, potentially including One97 Communications, Yatra Online, Real Image and MCX, would have their initial public offerings (IPOs) over the next 12 months.
In his Mint interview, Kuppam added: "The [India] portfolio size will be around $200m. It is not what we invested. It is basically how they are valued today. That is how (we would) carry it on our books after conservative valuing. The invested amount is around $150m. We (have) made some 70 investments so far in the Indian market. Close to 22 are positive exits, where we made money. Close to 15 to 20 are shut down or negative. And the rest are now in active portfolio.
In the companies we lost, in some we lost everything, in some we lost 50% and in some we would have lost 70%. We don’t reveal the figures on how much we lost in value. We are one of the top return-generating regions for Intel. Worldwide, we already had some 10 IPOs in our portfolio of investments, two were from India."