VCs invest $1.5 b in Indian-founded firms in US

Private Equity and Venture Capital firms invested about $1.5 billion in 125 Indian founded companies in the US during 2005, according to data from Venture Intelligence India, a division of TSJ Media. Of these, 63 companies closed rounds of over $10 million.

The previous year had witnessed 129 such companies raising $1.6 billion.

The largest single investment during 2005 was $150 million raised by Harpinder Madan co-founded FiberTower, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of infrastructure and services for cellular networks.

The latest round, which takes FiberTower's total financing to $225 million, was led by existing investor Crown Castle International with participation from other existing investors.

According to the Venture Intelligence India study, other Indian-founded companies that raised over $30 million in venture capital financing during the year included Paul Sekhri-co-founded Cerimon Pharmaceuticals, Rakesh Gupta and Anita Gupta co-founded TechBooks, Prabhat K Dubey co-founded Force10 Networks, Sridhar Ramachandran co-founded NexTone Communications, Yatish Pathak co-founded SOMA Networks and Amarjit Gill co-founded P A Semi.

On the merger and acquisition front, over 30 Indian-founded companies in the US were acquired during 2005, six of them for over $100 million, according to the Venture Intelligence India study. The single largest deal was the April acquisition of Ajay Chopra co-founded Pinnacle Systems by Nasdaq-listed Avid Technology for $462 million.

Mountain View, CA-based and Nasdaq-listed Pinnacle's digital media solutions are used in broadcast, video and audio editing, DVD and CDR authoring and on the Internet.