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The global venture capitalist Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is seeking broader investment opportunities with two of its family funds DFJ Growth Capital and Element Partners — kicking off action in India. This coincides with DFJ embracing local entrepreneurship focusing on India’s bottom of the pyramid as well as rising middle-class, offering unprecedented breadth in investment choices, its managing directors Andreas Stavropoulos and Josh Stein told ET. […] A majority of private equity (PE) players in the country expect a decline in activity in 2009 with only 28% expecting the scenario to improve over the same period, according to a Grant Thornton survey on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and PE investment scenario in India. 58% agree that the turmoil has affected M&A activity, but 45% believe that current valuations will increase deal activity in the short-term and more than 88% of the respondents believe that M&A is an integral part of their organisation's business strategy for growth. […] Financial services entity Religare Enterprises expects to close its first Rs 600-crore private equity fund, launched in joint venture with UK-based Milestone Capital, by April next year. “The fund raising work is in progess… We hope to close the fund by April 2010,” Religare Enterprises President Health Care Amit Varma said. Further, the company would be looking at exercising the green-shoe option of raising another Rs 200 crore for the fund — India Build out Fund I — depending on market conditions. […] Hyderabad-based Asmitha Microfin Limited has closed its second round of equity infusion with BlueOrchard Private Equity Fund pumping in Rs 50 crore. Asmitha Microfin Limited, a Hyderabad-based microfinance institution and one of the top five microfinance institutions in India in terms of portfolio size, presently serves over 1.16 million clients with a loan portfolio of about Rs 745 crore ($165 million) as of July 31, 2009. Asmitha has a network of 485 branches across 127 districts in 13 states in India. […] With nearly 20 per cent of its Rs 6,000-crore corpus invested in clean energy, IDFC Private Equity has identified clean technology as a focus area. The seven-year-old company, which manages three funds, has committed over Rs 1,100 crore to nine companies, the latest being Krishna Godavari Gas. The investment in the gas pipeline venture, where the Andhra Pradesh government and Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation are shareholders, was yet to be finalised, IDFC PE President and CEO Luis Miranda said. […] Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) said it will not be picking up a stake in Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (APPL), a company created in 2007 to hive off its 24 North Indian tea plantations, leaving Tata Tea with close to 50 per cent in a business in which it wanted to reduce exposure. Hari Sankaran, managing director, IL&FS said, “After the markets went topsy-turvy, we decided not to make any new investment till the markets return to stability.” According to the original plan, IL&FS and International Finance Corporation (IFC) were supposed to buy 20 per cent each in APPL and Tata Tea was supposed to hold 20 per cent, depending on worker participation. […] |