Showing posts with label Acquisition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Acquisition. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

There's some traction (in exits') for Indian VCs & that ain't bad!

Expectedly, there was some excitement & some skepticism over the recent acquisition of redBus by Ibibo. My comment on one such recent article "Is the redBus exit really good for the VC ecosystem inIndia?" on StartupCentral is as follows;

My comment:
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What you have said above sounds (to me) like;
If only the ‘sheer-return achieved on one exit’ by the VC is looked at in the broader context of ‘performance of the fund’ as such (disbursed funds?) rather than merely as a nX return on investment made into that particular company, only then will the overall picture emerge.
Now, just because you mentioned 200mio USD fund in your article, I wish to know if I can assume that one of the three VCs (or all three as an average) who disbursed funds of ~200Mio USD across past 7 years among multiple portfolio companies has hitherto managed only one attractive return of ~15-20X? (of RedBus) & this sheer return still doesn’t amount to being anything substantial to the LPs from whom the 200mio fund was raised?
If the answer is yes, I agree with you that for the Indian VC universe ‘Dilli abhi dhoor hain..’ (loosely translates as ~miles to go before resting on ones' laurels...)
Of course I’d also be cautiously optimistic when I say that if only the VCs that invested into RedBus used a similar good-sense & judgement while identifying, nurturing the other portfolio companies within this 200mio fund, then it is likely they’d still see some more good exists, including some from an IPO even.
Overall I guess there’s some traction & that aint bad. 

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Will Mylan's acquisition of Agila benefit Accel Partners?


Okay, the story goes like this....

Way back in 2007, Accel partners committed to invest & invested over the next three years 1.5mio USD in a Bangalore based start-up called Inbiopro. This investment turned into ~10% shareholding (guestimate) when Strides Arcolab acquired 70% stake in Inbiopro in 2010. It’ll be useful to slip-in here that somewhere in 2011/12 Strides separated out Inbiopro from Agila as a separate business entity called Agila Biotech.

Now, post the Mylan deal, Strides Arcolab committed to invest USD100mio into Agila Biotech, Given this impetus if Agila Biotech vigorously pursues the commercialization of its pipeline of 8 biosimilars, its valuation could go up to anywhere between USD200-500mio** in the next five years, depending upon how many registrations are successful. At which time if Strides again succeeds in finding a buyer for Agila Biotech (Mylan again, given its Biosimilar ambitions?), it is likely this will turn out into a USD20-50 million exit for Accel Partners, i.e from a decent 13x to a good 33x ROI.

My take away from this is, scout around for start-ups that have chosen 'quicker to market innovations' as their research focus, invest in them early on & work closely on the selection of a local partner & monetize during the multinational acquisition - Not a bad mantra for a decent-value exit in a market like India :-)

**The valuation guestimates are based on the expected worth of approvals (EU/ NA) which are primary assets in this context. 

Thursday, January 24, 2013

The clinical attrition of INX-189 post a 2.5 billion acquisition - are investors into life sciences really looking at where the buck is headed?

October 2012
Discussion initiated onGlobal Private Equity & Venture Capital group on Linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=48513&type=member&item=156370875&qid=b8ecfd7b-c40b-491c-9e3d-f3f42e0780e4&trk=group_search_item_list-0-b-ttl&goback=%2Egmr_48513



Agreed BMS is no VC & acquisition of Inhibitex at 2.5 billion was more a survival tactic, but probably the outcome could be such for many investments into the life science (drug discovery). I believe the investor due-diligence of the investee should go beyond market projections of the pipeline candidates & a rational assessment of the druggability & clinical longevity of the pipeline candidates is what should interest the investor the most – not sure if this happens to the extent required?

Would love to hear what the investor community feels about this.

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PS: My love went totally unrequitted :-)... zero response