Intel Capital, the world’s largest venture capital (VC) firm, has invested $65 million in 16 technology companies that include two Indian start-ups. The investments are part of the VC firm’s efforts to support emerging technologies and further technological innovation.
Perpetuuiti Technosoft, a Mumbai-based people, process and technology automation firm, and Bangalore-based Savaari Car Rentals are the Indian companies on the list.
The new investments, spanning nine countries, will help drive innovations in the cloud, data centre, mobile technologies and consumer-related services, said Intel Capital President Arvind Sodhani.
“We are a stage-agnostic investor and these investments range from seed-funding to series A (first round of early stage funding) and in some cases advanced funding…. The investments in Indian companies were from the country-specific fund,” Sodhani added.
‘Intel Capital Tech Fund’
In December 2005, Intel Capital had launched ‘Intel Capital India Technology Fund’ with a $250-million corpus, of which about 80 per cent has already been deployed.
Intel Capital is not looking at raising another India-specific fund as it has enough “dry powder”. The investment arm of Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, did not disclose company-specific investments but said its typical investments are in the $5-10 million range.
Perpetuuiti Technosoft
Perpetuuiti Technosoft, which also has a Singapore presence, provides business continuity solutions, disaster recovery management and business process automation. The company’s clientele includes Ooredoo (formerly Qtel), Vodafone India and Idea Cellular.
“The funds would be used to expand into the US markets, and for our sales and marketing activities,” said Rohil Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, Perpetuuiti TechnoSoft.
Savaari Car Rentals
Savaari Car Rentals, which uses the Web to offer car rentals across 60 cities in India, would use the funds to increase visibility, said its Founder and Chief Executive Officer Gaurav Aggarwal.
Apart from the Indian companies, Intel Capital made investments in CloudFX (Singapore), Cloudian (Japan/US), CSDN (China), 3D DotProduct (US), Fileforce (Japan) and Interlude (Israel).
Others in the list includes Lintes Technologies (Taiwan), Mobiles Republic (France/US), Prism Skylabs (US), Reduxio Systems (Israel), Rocketick (Israel), SBA Materials (US), SkySQL (Finland) and WiTricity (US)
(This correspondent is in San Diego at the invitation of Intel Capital)