Congratulations to UTI Ventures
Posted by Arun Uday on April 24, 2008
One of the factors holding back entrepreneurial activity in India has been the lack of enough motivational success stories. An important turning point in the history of PE investing in India was the stupendous success of the Bharti Telecom investment by Warburg Pincus. The multiple times return on capital they earned made other foreign investors wake up and take note of the opportunity here. Similar stories are required in the VC world to rev up entrepreneurial and VC activity in our country. One of the common complaints we hear is the lack of early stage funding in India, though thats changed a lot in recent past with multiple seed and early stage funds coming in. Success breeds success, and in a myriad ways. Lack of enough hi-tech entrepreneuiral successes where startup employees have taken home large sums by way of stock options has also been a deterrant for others to sign up for startups. Hence, a handful of big successes is all that is required to seed the ecosystem of investors, entrepreneurs and also other contributors (read tech staff) to come together to start building great cos.
Therefore, this news item on UTI’s blockbuster exit from Excelsoft augurs well for investors and entrepreneurs alike. Congrats to the UTI team!
April 25, 2008 at 5:13 am
One more reason to cheer on the Excelsoft deal is the size of initial investment (Rs 2.5 Cr)which has really grown by leaps and bounds to reach the current size. I think this can be categorized as a pure VC investment that has yielded record results over a period of time. So according to me this is in a higher pedestal than even the Bharti-Warburg deal which was slightly a late stage. I agree with Arun that we need more of the excelsoft deals which will kindle the entrepreneurial spirit in the country!!!