Tandem Capital to launch India mobile VC fund
Silicon Valley-based Tandem Capital, which focuses on the mobile sector, is launching an India-focused fund that plans to invest in 20 startups in the country over the next year. Aarin Capital’s Ranjan Pai and T V Mohandas Pai will be partners in the fund. The fund size has not yet been disclosed.
According to the Times of India, Tandem will add more partners in India soon.
The firm has been providing day-to-day operational and strategic support to develop mobile startups since 2011. It makes initial investments of around $200k through the issue of convertible notes in up to 6 businesses at a time, commiting more capital depending on the businesses' performance.
The firm typically works with its portfolio companies for around 6 months, but in India this period may be longer, says Rohit Bhagat, a partner at Tandem and former chairman at BlackRock Asia-Pacific.
Tandem will look for companies that have a cross-border outlook rather than companies just targeting the local market.
The firm claims a 90% success rate with its portfolio companies so far - IT alert service PagerDuty raised $10.7 million from Andreessen Horowitz in January, marketing engine MyTownPerks was acquired in 2012, Flightcaster was acquired by NextJump, and YouSendIt bought Attassa in 2010.
India is the world's second-largest mobile phone market and therefore a draw for those seeking opportunities to develop consumer-focused mobile technologies.
"For millions of Indian consumers who missed the PC revolution, the explosion of smartphones gives access to computers in their pockets," said Tandem co-founder Sunil Bhargava.
In January Tandem co-founder Doug Renert expressed interest in investing in mobile developer platforms, rich messaging, sound-oriented businesses, SMS marketing, targeted mobile gaming, vertical content aggregation and wearable sensors.
The India Fund will be Tandem's third. In June 2012 it has raised $32 million for Tandem Fund II. The capital came from industry veterans such as Verifone CEO Doug Bergeron, Google board member Ram Shriram and Amazon SVP of Consumer Business Jeff Wilke.
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