New Enterprise Associates looks to step up investments in India

MUMBAI: United States-based New Enterprise Associates (NEA), which last week raised $3.1 billion in the world’s largest venture capital fund, is looking to step up investments in India after going slow over the past two-three years. The venture capital fund, which has backed start-ups such as daily deals firm Groupon and online storage service Box in the US, has said that it will look to sharpen its focus on technology related themes.
“Over the last few years, when India was going through its worst crisis, we were very selective, but we will be much more open now,” Bala Deshpande, senior managing director at NEA told ET.

NEA, which raised over $2.5 billion in committed capital for the fourth consecutive time, has invested about $300 million in India till now from its previous two funds and has already started investing from the new fund, with a $10 million infusion in online baby care products retailer FirstCry. The firm set up its India office over seven years ago and has since then built up a portfolio of over a dozen companies.

It counts real estate broking portal IndiaHomes, day-care surgical chain Nova and television shopping firm Naaptol as its portfolio companies.

“We are very excited about how technology has democratised a lot of industries,” said Deshpande, who also sits on the board of Naukri’s owner Info Edge. As it looks at more technology enabled businesses, NEA will also look at early stage transactions including seed and series A deals, he added.

Early stage investors deployed over $1 billion in the first quarter of 2015, even as venture capital firms doubled their investments in domestic technology startups from a year ago to $621 million (about Rs 3,875 crore).

NEA is currently evaluating two-three companies in the software sector, where it invested Rs 31 crore in RezNext Global Solutions, a software as a service (SaaS) player focused on hospitality industry.

“In the US we are the largest investors in enterprise technology and have several unicorns. In India we are just starting to see emerging opportunities in the space,” said Deshpande.

NEA counts billion dollar valuation software services firms including WorkDay, MongoDB and Tableau Software among its portfolio companies in the US. Other sectors on its radar include healthcare services, medical technology and financial services.