Sequoia Capital to raise $400 m overseas

Sequoia Capital India, a venture capital firm, is raising $400 million from global investors.

Sandeep Singhal, managing director, told mediapersons, "We have a corpus of $350 million and are raising another $400 million. We hope to raise the funds in the next two months and intend to invest it in Indian companies over three years."

Sequoia Capital India, formed with the merger of Sequoia Capital and WestBridge Capital Partners, is being led by four managing directors of WestBridge Capital Partners - Sumir Chadha, KP Balaraj, Sandeep Singhal and SK Jain. The two firms had earlier co-invested in Bharti Telesoft and Mauj.

The portfolio of Sequoia Capital India today includes ICICI OneSource, Shaadi.com, Royal Orchid Hotels, marketRx and AppLabs Technologies among others. Its total investment in Indian firms is around $250 million.

Globally, the firm has $2 billion worth assets under management and has invested in companies such as Cisco, Google, Oracle, Yahoo! and Electronic Arts.

"We are in advanced stages of evaluation of 3-4 companies operating in infrastructure, retail and media space," Singhal said with regard to the new companies on their radar.

He added that earlier they would invest $1 million-$10 million in younger companies and move on to $15 million-$20 million investments at later stages.

"Now we are willing to invest large, even in the $10 million-$50 million range," Singhal said.