1947 Tech — Week 27
A few good articles and tweets that I came across this week..
1. Reliance Jio is eating the broadband: Den Networks, Hathway Cable, Siti fall 5–18% after Jio launches JioGigaFiber
Piyush Surana sums it up all in his tweet below.
2. New India-focused Fund: Jack Ma partners with Chinese VC Ganesh Ventures for $250M India-focused fund — ETtech
Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma has stepped up his aggressive push into India by joining forces with a $250 million Chinese venture capital fund called Ganesh Ventures that will be its strategic investment partner here.
The India-focussed fund, which seeks to build a strong network between Indian entrepreneurs and Chinese investors and entrepreneurs, has made its first close of $30 million backed by Ma’s ambitious eWTP Ecosystem Fund and Hong Kong-based Landmark Capital.
Ganesh Ventures will look to deploy its entire corpus in domestic startups over the next 3–5 years, beginning with companies in the media, technology, consumer products, financial technology and health technology sectors. It will set up offices in Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Hong Kong and Beijing and intends to finalise half a dozen deals this year.
This tweet by Krishnan Ganesh made me 😂
3. Long India: Lightspeed India raises second fund of $175 million
Venture capital firm Lightspeed India Partners Advisors Llp has raised a second, bigger fund of $175 million to invest in startups in consumer internet, software and other businesses. US-based Lightspeed, which has been operating in India for 12 years, launched its first dedicated fund for India in 2015. From that $135 million fund, Lightspeed made about 20 investments, including edutech firm Byju’s, messaging app Sharechat, and Udaan, a marketplace for businesses.
From its second fund, Lightspeed India will invest in 25–30 Indian startups, primarily early stage startups, and strike a few ‘opportunistic’ deals at the Series B and C stages
4. Big Payday for VC: From $1million to $1 Billion
Now this is what VCs look for — outliers in their portfolio. A portfolio company that returns their entire fund. Accel Partners led the Series A round in Flipkart with $1 million. Accel Partners is expecting to rake in close to $1 Billion.
5. Make in India: Samsung opens world’s largest phone factory in India
Samsung Electronics has formally opened a new factory in India, which the South Korean tech group says is the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturing plant, part of its plans to expand production in the world’s fastest growing major mobile phone market.
The factory in Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, will allow Samsung to make phones at a lower cost due to its scale at a time when other phone making hubs such as China are getting more expensive, analysts tracking the sector said
The new factory, with an investment of $720 million, will help Samsung to double its current capacity for mobile phones in Noida to an annual 120 million units after the phased expansion plan is complete, the company said in a statement.
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Have a great week :)
