How do companies raise funds at different stages of development? There are different types of financial assistance provided to the companies. Private equity and venture capital are two among them. Private Equity fund refers to an unregistered investment type, wherein the investors combine their money for investment purposes. Private Equity involves higher investments in the matured companies. There is lesser amount of risk involved in private equity. On the contrary venture capital financing implies funding to those ventures which involves high risk and initiated by new entrepreneurs, who need money to implement their ideas. Private equity mainly focuses on corporate governance whereas venture capital focuses management capability. Both private equity and venture capital has got different roles. Private equity funds are provided for growth and expansion of a business, but venture capital funds are for scaling up the operations. Here in this article we will look at different private equity and venture capitalist firms and their functioning.
Private Equity and Venture Capital
Private equity refers are the investments made by the investors or companies in the private companies that are not quoted on the stock exchange. Here the investments are made at the maturity level of the company. Private Equity firms buy an existing company and do restructuring to develop, expand and make it better than before. Leveraged Buyout, Venture Capital, Mezzanine Capital and Growth Buyout are some of the main strategies of Private Equity. It has become an important part of the financial services across the world in last 20 years. Private equity is one of the attractive funding options.
Venture capital is a private or institutional investment made into early-stage of a company. It is the money invested in businesses that are small which have a huge potential to grow. The venture capital funding process mainly involves four phases in the development of a company: Idea generation, Start up, Ramp up, and Exit. It is also referred to risk capital or patient risk capital, as it includes the risk of losing the money if the venture doesn’t succeed or takes a longer period to get it established. It is the most suitable option for funding a high capital source for companies and for businesses having large up-front capital requirements. There are mainly three methods of venture capital financing. They are Equity, Participating debentures and conditional loan.
An Analysis
Venture investing in India is one of the initial efforts by the Government of India at providing risk capital which resulted in the establishment of the Risk Capital Foundation. There have been some other efforts such as the creation of the Technology Development Fund (TDF) from a cess which was dependent on all technology imports and other quasi-market based initiatives such as the Programme for Advancement of Commercial Technology (PACT). The regulatory authority for VC and PE in India operate at three levels. At top level is the set of regulations which affects the constitution of the investment vehicle and the inward cross-border funds and cross border outward remittance of disinvestment. At the next level there are regulations governing the issuance of securities by investee companies and the laws related to the governance of the investee enterprise. At the last stage, there are the regulations regarding the taxation of gains and income from various investment activities. It is estimated that in Indian VC and PE industry, only about ten percent of the funds that from domestic sources which implies ninety percent of the capital that is invested in this asset class are of foreign origin. Investments through VC and PE funding from foreign sources are mainly governed by the foreign direct investment (FDI) regulations of India. These regulations have lightened up over the years to permit unrestricted foreign ownership of a nearly all sectors. But there are certain other restrictions, which limit the flexibility for foreign VC and PE investors in terms of doing business. For example, VC and PE investments that are considered as convertible debt are subject to rules and regulations governing foreign currency borrowings which are often subjected to some periodic changes.
Venture Intelligence (VI) is the oldest provider of data on the VC and PE industries in India. The VI database has benefited from its vast use by a number of players in the venture investing industry. It also provides all transaction related data in one single place which makes it suitable to easy analysis. The analysis of data is carried at three levels of transaction. At fist level is the analysis on enterprise or the investee company. A detailed analysis about the company is carried out here. At next level various investment activity at the level of rounds of funding are analysed and measured. At third level an analysis is done based on the investment activity in terms of the funding provided by individual funds to various enterprises in their portfolio.
Regional distribution of PE and VC funded enterprises
REGIONCOMPANY%North77121%East943%South135037%West126134%Central301%Overseas1614%Unknown251%
Conclusion
From the small beginnings in the late eighties, the VC and PE industry has grown in terms of breadth, depth as well as effective in fund management practices. Both VC and PE have the capacity to support enterprises across the range of sectors, which have the potential by providing sufficient funding at various stages of development of the company. This resulted in relatively large number of companies to go public or to expand. It has also shown creativity in terms of coming up with structuring mechanisms that will allow Indian enterprises to create organizational platforms which will enable them to compete in the global market. It will make the industry a more effective and pervasive enabler of starting up enterprises in India as well as it will provide a set of investment opportunities for the public securities market. As a corollary it will also turn the industry as a key driver of economic growth.
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