Indian designed chipsets power satellites and future of mobility; now over $100 million private equity money will find these startups to build connected civilizations, says Vishal KrishnaIndians have moved on from making potato chips to building chip sets for connected vehicles and smart cities. Analysts estimate that startups that have a combination of software, hardware and embedded systems experience can raise money. This industry has already raised close to $60 million now. Saankhya Labs, Ineda Systems and Si2 Microsystems are all betting big on the global industry. With words such as internet-of-things and smart cities floating around, these companies are out there to prove to the world that their technology is more than just a Make in India campaign.Tucked away in a corner of Whitefield, a sprawling industrial complex, in Bangalore, is a small chip manufacturer called Si2 Microsystems. Upon entering its futuristic lab one can see machines building chips on substrate. These robots use golden thread to make integrated circuits with such precisionbecause the operating chipset ultimately lands in to defence satellites.Si2M specialises in manufacturing System-in-Package (SIP) modules that give birth to the connected machines that we see in daily life. From a mobile phone to the car and later ending with the connected lights, at home, everything carries a SIP module. To illustrate this further, a SIP is nothing but a combination of the central processing unit and its allied systems, which have different applications, packaged or stacked into a unit. The popular architecture is System-On-Chip (SOC) where functionalities are in independent chips. The engineers would know this better than the lay reader. The lay reader has to think of all functionalities in a box (SIP) versus individual chips (SOC) having their own boxes.For this Rs 50-crore company, the year 2015 has become a turning point. After five years of hard work and becoming the preferred vendor for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and work with several automobile OEMs, when founders, brothers Dinanath and Sanjay Soni invested $2 million on this lab, there were naysayers who said that they could never compete with the Chinese companies. “We have to spend a lot more on marketing,” says Sanjay Soni, Director and co-founder of Si2M, chuffed about the kind of research that has gone in to building chipsets. The company hopes to raise the bar and increase their investment by $200,000 (Rs 1.3 crore) to spend on marketing activity. They are a manufacturing company and need not spend, on marketing, like a startup focused on consumers and, therefore, spending millions of dollars becomes necessary from imperative investors.“These are ideas that can generate jobs in research,” says Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research. It also adds up to the whole make in India campaign, which even Chinese electronics companies, like Xiaomi, are waking up to.“Chinese companies have realised the potential of Indian software engineering and they are already setting up shop here to aid their growth in chip manufacturing,” says DinanathSoni. The brothers add that the buzz around IoT and growing defence spends has made many small and medium enterprises, globally, buy their SIP modules because they offer high value in performance. “We are a premium company. Our research allows a soldier to carry the least amount of payload because the hardware is miniaturised,” says Dinanath Soni.Why are they important? Rs 48,000 crore has been allocated to the building of smart cities, cars are going to have more electronics in them - 30 per cent of the cost of manufacturing is going to be on software- and there is this whole campaign around the Internet of Things and Everything (IOT&E). The number of wearables in the world that connect to larger smarter systems is also going to go up. IDC, the research firm, predicts that the worldwide wearables market will reach a total of 45.7 million units in 2015. From there, the market will reach a total of 126.1 million units in 2019, resulting in a five-year CAGR of 45.1 per cent. No wonder automobile software centres like Robert Bosch Engineering India (RBEI), Mercedes Benz Research and Development India along with chipset manufacturers like Freescale and Texas Instruments are playing a major role in investing in Indian R&D. Robert Bosch filed 179 patents in 2013 and 80 in 2014.“The use of deep research on chips for the global automotive industry for safety and semi-autonomous driving is happening out of India,” says Manoj Koul, Director-Product Development, Texas Instruments. Another startup that has taken this deep dive in to making a standard chip for the wearable industry is called Ineda Systems. This Hyderbad-based company has raised a total of $43.3 million and has been backed by the likes of Cisco Systems. “There will be several billion wearables in the market and the industry is in need of low cost and low power consuming processors,” says Balaji Kanigicherla, CTO and co-founder of Ineda Systems. The company’s first big launch with a smart phone chip manufacturer is to happen in another six months. Ineda’s processor is an SOC, unlike a SIP of Si2M. Saankya Labs is building a solution that brings different standards of digital and analog TV on to a single chip. The have raised $5 million from Intel Capital.These chip manufacturers have taken a giant leap of faith and their products will be defined in the era of the smart city or the smart car. It is also a time of make or break for these companies. However, it looks like the world wants to make these Indian companies leaders in building cost effective and powerful chips with quality software applications. No wonder the likes of Intel and Qualcomm are betting big on Indian talent. Perhaps there will be many more companies like these chip makers.
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More than $100 million will flow into the industry through acquisitions and investments, writes Vishal KrishnaOver 6 lakh engineers pass out of colleges in India every year. Additionally, professional colleges churn out 5 million graduates every year as well. According to MeritTrac, a meagre 15 per cent of them are employable. To increase the number of employable people in the country, several certification courses have cropped up. NIIT and Aptech were the pioneers of certification courses for almost two decades. Of late, many entrepreneurs have taken a bet on training this generation on to a new set of skills. Simplilearn, Jigsaw Academy, Edutor and Edureka have been fighting it out to win students and universities, too. These companies combined can also raise more than $100 million in 18 months.For universities, the main challenge in training people is huge. These startups are aiding employability in the country. In fast-changing world, students have to be certified in technologies such as big data engineering, computer languages like Python, PHP and Hadoop distributed computing architecture. Some of these courses are heavy terms and can leave any graduate with an uneasy feeling about moving ahead in their career. These days the sartups play a vital role in shaping the future of the country. According to the National Skill Development Corporation, the firms are not only betting on the valuations, but also betting on 300 million young people who are actively seeking jobs by 2030. To boot LinkedIn acquired online skill development firm Lynda in the US for $1.5 billion. Now Lynda — in its LinkedIn avatar—will look at startups that have built efficiencies and scale in education.“Education and professional skilling is a big bet if these companies use technology to make learning easier,” says Sanjeev Agarwal, co-founder of Helion Ventures.Helion’s first bet was on Simplilearn where it jointly with Mayfield and Kalaari Capital invested $28 million. In the six years, Simplilearn has scaled up to 400,000 customers in 150 countries. It offers more than 250 courses with an option of either taking it in a classroom or online module.“India needs certification and vocational training courses. There is a big opportunity to expand these courses globally too,” says Krishna Kumar, founder of Simplilearn.Recently, Simplilearn acquired a marketing training company called Market Motive in the US for $10 million. This will give the company a firm foothold in the US.To add to the opportunities in India and the US, there is a shortage of 200,000 data scientists by 2015. Gartner — the research firm—predicts that there will be a ten fold growth for training data scientists in five years.Two profitable startups, Edureka (an annualized revenue of Rs.30 crore) and Jigsaw Academy (an annualized revenue of Rs 12 crore.) have hit big by training data scientists. Their students are sought after in analytics firms such as Fractal Analytics, MuSigma and TEG Analytics.Similarly, Wipro and Infosys, which have been adding analytics teams, are working with these two startups to train their employees. Edureka and Jigsaw are in advanced talks with investors to raise more than Rs 20 crore."Our scalable platform works with more than 1,000 curated teachers and over 1000 courses," says Lovleen Bhatia, co-founder of Edureka.The Bangalore-based Manipal Group of Institutions is known to swoop in on these profitable companies to scale up their data training courses."We have been training engineers to use data creatively and intelligently," says Gaurav Vohra, CEO of Jigsaw Academy. They have plans to hit revenues of $50 million in eighteen months.Jigsaw is founded by Sarita Digumarti and Gaurav Vohra, both data scientists in the US-based firm before founding the company in 2012 in Bangalore.There are some betting on schools, too. Edutor Technologies is betting on building interactive technologies that aid in education. They have raised Rs 2 crore from Hyderabad Angels and will raise more when their tablet based application is adopted by over 50000 schools in India. It currently has more than 40000 paying students. The company is betting on self learning through tablets.Other startups focused on building school based practice tests and learning are Embibe, Nayi Disha and Purple Stream have raised money to focus entirely on schools.BW | Businessworld predicts that global funds will focus on education technology and we can witness small acquisitions in 12 months. However, there has not been a big acquisition since 2011, in education tech. The last one was Pearson bought online tuition firm TutorVista for Rs 700 crore. Prepare for big monies coming into the sector to make many more Indians employable.
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Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for startups, helps a rural youth to develop his idea of creating a phone-based voting app. K Chandra Mohan reports This is the story of Lavanya Kumar, an engineering graduate from Mogili village, in Andhra Pradesh and his dreams of developing a voting app and how Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for startups, helped him achieve his dream. Starting life in a village, Kumar had to work in sericulture farms and save up for his University education. With sheer tenacity he finished his software engineering, at NIT-Suratkal, and landed a job in Hyderabad. However, he had plans of becoming an entrepreneur and came to Bangalore with an idea. His idea was simple, why shouldn’t the power of smartphones be used to allow citizens to vote from the comfort of their homes. There are 200 million senior citizens and more than 60 million Indians work abroad. “I have been thinking of the concept of ‘One India One Vote’ since my college days and I have created a platform where voters can cast their vote from smartphones,” says Lavanya Kumar. He adds that he has created an SMS based system for lower end phones as well. His cloud-based platform captures information of every registered voter and securely allows a citizen to cast the vote with a click of a button. His algorithm verifies the user and does not allow them to re-vote, thereby protecting the system from graft. If this product takes off then rigging can be curbed and costs of re-polling can be avoided. In a national election or re-polling, the nation spends more than Rs 400 crore. Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for start-ups, took note of his idea and latched on to it. The team began mentoring the Kumar and gave him six months to make the product ready and will also eventually help him to present the plan to the Prime Minister’s ‘Digital India’ initiative, where one can vote with an SMS too. The usage of smartphones is rapidly growing in India. It is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. According to Gartner, the rise in smartphone users in India since 2015 is 260 per cent and is expected to reach 200 million users by 2018. However, there are 400 million rural youth who cannot connect to India’s fast growing technology and some of them have ideas that can use technology to solve rural problems. The Unitus Seed Fund has earmarked $24 million for rural funding and to invest in companies that can make a social impact. While this fund focuses on some business plans and potential companies, there is an entire mentoring part that is missing. This is where Growth Enabler, a mentoring centre for startups, takes over. “This product, once ready, is a great product for angel investors and other large investors to back,” says Rajeev Baduni, founder of Growth Enabler. The story of Growth Enabler dates back to the year 2013, when three highly passionate and committed individuals decided to wave good-bye to their flourishing corporate careers and began life as entrepreneurs. “Our journey has been a real mix of many events, emotions, experiences and moments – most of which have been revealing lessons of how we can become great human beings’ says Aftab Malhotra, one of the founders of Growth Enabler. Rajeev Banduni, Lars Lin Villebaek and Aftab Malhotra were on a mission to make a difference to the world of entrepreneurship. They realised early on that to grow and scale a business requires not only experience and a winning mind-set, but many other ‘never talked about’ assets. These assets have a ‘multiplier effect’ on a startup’s ability to grow, and often make the difference between success and failure. These assets are accessible only to a select few; Growth Enabler calls them ‘the other 5 per cent’ or the city based businesses. These are people with connections, great academic background and plenty of access to money. So, what about the other 95 per cent of the assets? This is what Growth Enabler wants to tap.Growth Enabler’s first goal is to ensure that they reach as many people as possible and therefore decided to create a business model and an online platform that is democratic and scalable. The intention is to provide access to the following:• Any person wanting to start a business and has an idea (Growth Enabler calls them Wantrepreneurs)• Those who have recently started a business (Startups)• Those who have already established business and eager to grow (SMB’s)• To support startups by connecting them to elite investors. • Growth Enabler will also provide free mentoring and help these“wantrepreneurs” to find out the right funding.
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Arshad Khan traces the investments made by the great Ratan Tata in startupsSince his retirement as the chairman of Tata & Sons, Ratan Tata, one of India's most respected businessmen, has donned the new avatar of a venture capitalist. With an estimated personal wealth of around Rs 6,000 crore, he is on an investment spree to help hot startups get established into successful enterprises. Over the last one year alone, he has bought stakes in 10 companies, mostly e-commerce firms. He also ventured in sectors like automobiles, retail, jewelry and telecom through his personal investment company, RNT Associates. He also has a stake in two new entrants in aviation sector, Air Asia and Vistara. Domestic startups are also excited about attaching their names with Tata to benefit from his experience of over five decades. Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl comments, “an investment by a legendary and respected figure like Mr Tata is an excellent validation of our focused strategy on building a long-term enterprise and marks the start of a very important phase for the company.” Tata bought stake in the e-comm giant last year. Not just domestic startups, even foreign majors are keen to associate themselves with the business tycoon. Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Ju said, "He (Tata) is one of the most well-respected business leaders in the world. An investment by him is an affirmation of the strategy we have undertaken in India so far." BW|Businessworld makes a list of famous startups where the business honcho has made investment in less than a year. Snapdeal: The e-commerce giant became the first destination of post retirement Tata investment. It is believed that tata holds 0.17 per cent stake in the e-tailer, his stake being worth around Rs 21 crore. Founded in 2010 by two IITians, Snapdeal became one of the fastest emerging e-commerce players. Tata’s attachment will prove to be strategic for the firm as it faces high competition from Flipkart and Amazon in the domestic market. Paytm: Another e-commerce firm which grabbed the business honcho’s attention, Tata has acquired an undisclosed stakes on March this year in One97 Communications, which owns and operates the Paytm. Initially an online recharge service provider, it rapidly grew into one of the major e-commerce player. Bluestone: It is a Bangalore-based online jewelry retailer. In September 2014, Tata made a strategic investment in the e-tailer. On Tata's investment, its co-founder Gaurav Singh Kushwaha said, “an investment by Ratan Tata who has been at the helm of India’s most successful and respected conglomerate is a validation of our approach in building an innovative brand that is disrupting the jewellery market.” CarDekho: In February 2105, Tata invested in Girnar Software, a parent company, which owes and operate the online automobiles classifieds website CarDekho.com founded in 2008, the website leads in its segment. Urban Ladder: founded in 2012 Urban Ladder is an online furniture retailer which sells wide range of products like bed, sofas, wardrobe etc. At present the website has its presence in 12 cities.It became an interest of Tata in November 2104. OlaCabs: the taxi-hailing app OlaCabs is the latest destination of the business tycoon’s personal venture. Founded in 2011 by twp IITians, Olacabs is one of India’s largest aggregator of rental cabs with operations in over 100 cities and 1.5 lakh vehicles registered on its platform is backed by Japan's SoftBank. What is worth noticing that Tata is not the only stalwart to show interest in the startups. The trend was probably started by Wipro’s chairman Azim Premji in 2006 with his investment firm PremjiInvest. Azim Premji has investments in Myntra and Snapdeal. Narayana Murthy, Infosys co-founder also has a joint venture with Amazon to help small and medium businesses enterprises to go online.
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Healthifyme raises close to $1 mn, announces its partnership with Micromax Mobile, report K Chandra Mohan and Vishal KrishnaHealthifyme, a nutrition and wearable technology company, announced an undisclosed second round of funding at a startup conference held by Microsoft Ventures on Thursday (18 June). Sources added that this second round was close to $1 million led by Bala Parthasarthy of Angel Prime and Amit Gupta of InMobi. HealthifyMe had earlier raised $250000 from angel investors. This signals the interest of investors in investing in wearable health device companies that offer services. According to IDC, a research firm, vendors will ship a total of 45.7 million wearble units in 2015, up a strong 133.4 per cent from the 19.6 million units shipped in 2014. By 2019, total shipment volumes are forecast to reach 126.1 million units, resulting in a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45.1 per cent. Healthifyme also announced its partnership with Micromax Mobiles, one of the largest mobile device manufacturers, in the country to sell their UFit band. This device purchased by the first 1000 people will offer free nutrition services through the Healthifyme app downloaded from any app store. This move will give Healthifyme a market access of nearly 20 million smartphone customers. The company will now compete with the likes of GoQii and GetActive which offer wearble technology health services. GoQii has added over 500 nutritionists and is a leading startup in the wearble technology industry. Sources say it has invested over $5 million in the seed round itself. The next rounds of funding for both companies could be more than $50 million. Meanwhile Healthifyme plans to recruit 1,000 nutritionists, currently it employs 100, and fitness trainers in the coming days. It also plans several low cost plans to its customers and has managed to acquire 100,000 users. Thushar Vashist, CEO and Founder, Healthifyme says, "We are on a mission to HealthifyIndia. I am glad to have received support from investors who believe in our mission." He adds that with this fund raising round they are going to democratise healthy living - providing fitness and weight loss at a fraction of market value, while simultaneously providing employment to hundreds of nutritionists and trainers. HealthifyMe, built for the Indian customer, provides access to the world's first and largest food database, a sophisticated calorie counter for regional foods and a thorough exercise tracker for logging in physical activities. While GoQii tracks calorie count based on food intake and has a nutritionist assigned to each individual. HealthifyMe also works in partnership with leading giants, in healthcare, such as Apollo and Manipal, where the app has proved effective in treating and preventing clinical obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems and other lifestyle diseases. The only problem is that regulation does not allow these companies to share data with insurance businesses. Therefore customised insurance plans cannot be sold to individuals. Regulators also fear that the data of consumers, stored in the cloud of these service providers, could be stolen by hackers for malign intent. If regulation comes through these businesses are in for $1 billion valuation with added services. "All wearable companies have to provide services to scale up. They have to define their business models," says Sanchit Vir Gogia, CEO of Greyhound Research. Currently, the wearable and health services makes sense if hospitals and insurance companies can use this data to track and reward users. The data is a gold mine. Since the hardware is already commoditised, the companies should make good with the data to increase revenues. GoQii is focusing it's plans entirely in the USA because the propensity to using data is higher in the USA. Healthifyme wants to focus on South Asian markets where the price points are lower and is a challenging market to conquer. "Today everyone wants to have a great lifestyle with good advice; its the service that makes us unique," says Vishal Gondal of GoQii. Meanwhile GetActive is focused on the Indian market and is offering fitness tracking at an affordable price of $80. They have raised an undisclosed round from angel investors. But it offers no advice on nutrition. India has 600 million people below the age of 40 and it surely is a large market for the nascent wearable health technology industry.
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Finding start-ups that are changing the lives of people is a hard step to take. There are some that go extra mile to tell the world that there is merit in creating businesses that change lives. The Unitus Seed Fund, which is a $23 million fund, has made finding social entrepreneurs easy. However, the fund managers are humble enough to say that India can produce many more ideas that are relevant in a mobile first world to solve social problems. With more than 300 million smartphones hitting the Indian market by 2018, USF can create great businesses. Its three year track record has already set things rolling with investments in sectors like education, mobile commerce and retail. Dave Richards, the managing partner of the fund, spoke with BW | Businessworld's Vishal Krishna about their endless quest to create social impact. Q: A decade ago your equity fund took risks in microfinance and created a change in India, you showed everyone that microfinance can make money. Does the same philosophy follow this fund with the proliferation of mobile technology? A: Yes we want to set a similar trend. We want to back entrepreneurs that can change the other India, a sizeable population that is yet to experience the internet. A decade ago we saw our investee companies build technology that could capture payments on remote devices and send information back from the village to the central operations centre. Now with mobile phones, and growing network infrastructure, we can build new businesses for challenges that were never addressed better. For example, in healthcare, we have invested in a company called Welcare Health Systems. They create affordable eye screening solutions. All the data captured on diabetic retinopathy, a disease which can lead to blindness is captured real time and sent to doctors on a real time basis. The company can easily integrate a mobile solutions play. Similarly we have invested a market place for health services which can bring transparency in connecting hospitals to patients. This can have a mobile device play too. However in healthcare there are underlying challenges, in the Indian system, because of the unaccounted for cash transactions in the ecosystem. This is still difficult to break. That said there is a chance for technology to create transparency. Q: What about education and other retail services?A: Hippocampus is a company that has changed the way we look at rural education. They are a rural kindergarten learning centre. The data suggests that 60 per cent of rural children do not finish school. This company has already created more than 100 learning centres and is targeting the rural masses who can pay Rs 250 a month. Think about the solutions and technology intervention here in the long run. This company is making a serious impact and will eventually send more kids in to schools in rural areas. The fund’s interest is also to look at agriculture. Supply chain is a key part of India’s growth in the future. One of our portfolio companies makes organic agri-input. They help farmers improve the soil and make it ready for organic farming. Then we have a retail company that connects rural artisans to customers. This is a Rs 16,000 crore opportunity. We have invested in 16 companies and we have several business plans sent to us. Q: What about mobile first businesses? A: Mobile internet is a key here. A majority of India will access internet on phones and this will change the way information is consumed and services will be very important here. We have three portfolio companies that use mobile to deliver low cost services in the city. They are mGaadi, JiffStore and Blowhorn. All these companies address the local commuter to connect with his rickshaws, the second company provides a mobile solution for small stores and the last one connects businesses to move product across the city and deliver to customers. These businesses will build more services on top of the mobile. We believe this will be the fastest growing segment in the country. Q: Tell me a bit about the fund and the support you have had?A: It has been great. We have nine start-up scouts across the country and they are the ones who bring the maximum number of ideas to the table. We have several top senior fund advisors from across the world. As you know we have big names as fund investors; to name a few for the global fund are investors like the Lemelson Foundation and the Deshpande Foundation. Then we have local investors for the seed fund and they include names like Mohan Das Pai and RanjanPai among many others. Today investors across the world are looking at India because of the sheer opportunity and challenges it presents. I must tell you that, since you had asked me about skilling, it is very important to create employable people in this country. We have already invested in a company that can help people in soft skills, especially for commerce students, to be able to land a job. The fund will look at profitable businesses ideas in the rural and urban poor areas. (BW Bureau)
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Eight months ago Kunal Bahl of Snapdea, met Kunal Shah of Freecharge at a coffee shop to discuss what would be the next step to stay ahead in the e-commerce industry. Yesterday, both of them joked with the media that they did not need a banker to seal the deal. The deal was signed with the aim of beating the competition and staying ahead in the e-tail race. "We chalked out the foundation and our small M&A team took care of the rest," says Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal, along with Kunal Shah of Freecharge. There will be some accounting and shareholding patterns to sort out because Freecharge is part of Accelyst Solutions Private Limited, which will now be the subsidiary of Jasper Infotech, the company that owns Snapdeal. However, the synergies of the deal are evident and there may be some push from the Softbank team, the Japanese telecommunications and internet giant, run by business tycoon Masayoshi Son, in driving the consolidation. Snapdeal is backed by Softbank which put in $627 million in 2014 itself while it also has a 37 per cent stake in China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba. Ali Baba has invested in PayTM, which competes with Freecharge. Clearly the message is to take on Flipkart and Amazon in India. Now all eyes will certainly be on PayTM, Freecharge's competition, and their their fund raising plans. The larger question is will they be up for consolidation with a suitor now?. Softbank has invested $627 million in Snapdeal last year. They also have a 32 per cent stake in Ali Baba, the Chinese online market place, which has invested $575 million in One97Communications which is the parent company that owns PayTM. Why was Freecharge important? Its revenues could be around $8 million (the company does not disclose its revenue and does not confirm the number) and since it did not have a e-commerce play like PayTM, it makes absolute sense for Snapdeal to acquire it. But with Softbank in the helm of things, in Snapdeal (which now owns Freecharge) and in PayTM (through Ali Baba) we at Businessworld believe that the payments industry is clearly heading for big consolidation phase. Freecharge has 20 million registered customers and 3 million active users who regularly pay their mobile and DTH TV bills on the platform. In return Freecharge offers users coupons which can be redeemed at their favourite restaurants and cinema halls. This also included a percentage of the payments that could be availed as cash back offers. Through the Freecharge platform Snapdeal has access to a younger customer, who is between 18 and 25 years of age, and they can cross sell deals on the market place through Freecharge. Rumours are ripe that it was a 80 per cent stock deal and that 20 per cent was paid in cash. Kunal Bahl says that majority of it was a stock deal. Newspapers value the deal size to be Rs 2,800 crore or $420 million. Sources also add that Kunal Shah is richer by Rs 80 crore, in cash, after this current deal. Sources also say that his business is now valued at 50 times its revenue in dollar terms.
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India's biggest online cab-hailing service Ola has raised about $314 million in a fresh funding round from investors led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global, a company filing showed. Private equity investors including Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Steadview Capital also invested in ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, the owner of Ola, in the latest funding round, the filing dated April 2 to the Registrar of Companies showed. In October, Ola had raised $210 million from Japan's SoftBank Corp, which did not participate in this round. Last month, Ola bought rival TaxiForSure for $200 million in one of India's biggest e-commerce deals as it looks to see off fast-growing United States-based rival Uber. Ola is investing in technology, better safety features as well as new offerings as it expands its network. Besides letting customers hail taxis as well autorickshaws, the cheaper three-wheeled taxis that ply on India's roads, Ola's mobile app also allows customers to order food in some localities.
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Nearly 100 foreign funds have been asked to cough up an estimated $5-6 billion for "untaxed gains" made by them in the Indian markets over the past years in the biggest such tax demand in the country. The number of affected investors can rise substantially as assessments are still in progress and notices could be served in many more cases, taking the overall tax demand from them to well over $10 billion, sources said. Spooked by these "retrospective" notices and assessment orders, the foreign investors have begun lobbying intensely with the policy makers and regulators, while stating that the move goes against the government's stated position of providing a "non-adversarial and stable tax regime". Till March 31, close to 100 FIIs got notices from the Tax Department for a controversial minimum alternate tax (MAT) of 20 per cent, while they are now being followed up with assessment orders. The FIIs have, however, decided to challenge the tax demands, stating that MAT cannot be levied on FIIs or FPIs as they do not earn any "business income" in India and their income is defined as "capital gains" under the I-T Act. These FIIs, many of whom have now converted themselves into Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs), include entities from the US and Europe as also those operating through Singapore, Hong Kong and Mauritius. "This development has caught everyone by surprise and is extremely worrying for foreign investors," said Patrick Pang, a managing director at the Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA) in Hong Kong. "It suggests that the Indian government can come out at any time and re-clarify what was believed to be an established tax policy on foreign investments." The issue has been raised by FIIs with Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, capital markets regulator Sebi, the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the top Finance Ministry officials, while they are now planning to approach Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene in the matter. When contacted, a top official said that the government is looking into the matter to allay any "genuine concern" such investors might have, but added that no assurance can be given as of now to nullify the notices. In India, foreign investors have hitherto paid 15 per cent on short-term listed equity gains, 5 per cent on gains from bonds, and nothing on long-term gains, but from late last year many firms received notices from tax inspectors requiring them to pay MAT, potentially bringing overall tax on these gains to as much as 20 per cent. There are an estimated 8,000 FPIs registered in the country and they have emerged as a mainstay of the Indian markets over the years with an overall outstanding net investment of $226 billion (over Rs 11 lakh crore). This includes over Rs 8 lakh crore in stocks and Rs 3 lakh crore in debt markets. In the fiscal 2014-15 itself, FPIs made a net investment of Rs 2.7 lakh crore into the Indian markets. Interestingly, this is the first time since 1993, when FIIs were allowed to invest in the Indian markets, that such investors have been asked to pay MAT. Investor SentimentAmid concerns that investor sentiment can take a hit as similar demands may be slapped on foreign companies, many international bodies have red-flagged the latest move of the Tax Department, saying "this may act as strong deterrent for foreign investment in India". These organisations include European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA), Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (ASIFMA) and ICI Global, while many foreign funds have also individually raised the issue. MAT is generally applicable to domestic and foreign companies having a "place of business in India" that are required to draw up a balance sheet and a profit and loss account for their business income. However, the Tax Department began issuing tax notices to FIIs as well late last year. To clarify the situation, Jaitley in his Budget this year proposed to amend the relevant sections so as to specifically "provide that income from transactions in securities (other than short term capital gains arising on transactions on which securities transaction tax is not chargeable) arising to an FII, shall be excluded from the chargeability of MAT." These "amendments will take effect from April, 1, 2016 and will, accordingly, apply in relation to the assessment year 2016-17 and subsequent assessment years". "There is nothing (in the budget) to suggest that it (the exemption) would apply to old cases," one tax department official said. It is this "prospective" nature of the clarificatory amendment that has led to the Tax Department continuing with its notices and assessment orders for MAT demand from the FIIs for the past years. Indian tax laws allow such notices and assessments to be issued for up to seven previous years. Experts, however, said that such tax demands would also override benefits enjoyed by foreign entities under India's bilateral tax treaties with Mauritius and Singapore - two jurisdictions that account for a major chunk of overseas inflows. "The current action by the tax authorities practically results in overriding the favourable capital gains tax provisions in India's treaties with countries such as Mauritius and Singapore," said Sudhir Kapadia, National Tax Leader at EY. The situation has created "avoidable uncertainty" in taxation of an important source of foreign investment in the Indian economy, he added. Ketan Dalal, Senior Tax Partner at PwC, also said that the uncertainty over MAT is hurting investor sentiment and was creating "the image of a tax regime where unpleasant surprises seem to be the norm". (Agencies)
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Flipkart, India's largest online retailer, said it had raised funding worth $700 million, as it tries to compete with Amazon, which is rapidly scaling up operations in the country. Flipkart, founded in 2007 by two former Amazon employees, has been in talks in recent weeks to raise up to $1 billion. The company said it raised the $700 million from new investors including Baillie Gifford, Greenoaks Capital, Steadview Capital, T. Rowe Price Associates and Qatar Investment Authority along with existing investors including DST Global, GIC, ICONIQ Capital and Tiger Global. Popular for selling books and electronics online, Flipkart operates as a marketplace that allows third-party vendors to sell products on the site. This year it acquired fashion portal Myntra and crossed the $1 billion mark in gross merchandise value. The company is incorporated in Singapore and has filed with the regulator there for conversion to a public company, obligatory for companies with more than 50 shareholders, it said in the statement. "This filing ensures we are in compliance with the laws of Singapore and is in no way indicative of any upcoming IPO or of any corporate activity that the company is engaged in either in Singapore or any other part of the world," the statement added. (Reuters)
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