•How is India shaping up as a destination for VCs, when compared to China in particular?

We are extremely bullish on the investment landscape in India. We believe there are tremendous opportunities in the local consumer markets in India. Business models for the Internet have been well proven in the US, and we have also seen these models succeed in China. As penetration of broadband and wireless increases, we think the Indian market will mimic China.

There are also investment opportunities for mid-stage product companies in India, and of course, hybrid investments—we already have more than 20 hybrid or cross-border investments in our portfolio.

• There is a lot of talk about finding the next TCS, Infosys or Wipro from the current pool of IT midcaps we have. Do you believe there are more such big success stories?

We do believe that there will be such big success stories among smaller IT companies, but the markets are still based in the US. Therefore, we’ve found that the smart companies in India that want to aggressively target

global markets choose to work with VC firms that can open doors for them, and expand their markets globally.

For example, last year we made a $13.8 million investment in Persistent Systems, a world-class Outsourced Software Product Development (OPD) company based in Pune—a company that is growing at a 60 per cent growth rate each year. The OPD sector is extremely important to India’s IT evolution.

• Will the raised corpus mean that the total number of investments by Norwest in India will go up?

Yes, our latest Fund, NVP X, will enable us to pursue early, mid and late-stage, investment-worthy emerging growth opportunities in the global IT sector, particularly in India. Norwest is traditionally an early stage VC firm. We are extremely interested in both seed and early stage investments in India and creating new technology companies, as well as investing in successful later-stage companies.

• Is the domestic Indian market changing fast enough to attract capital too?

We prefer to invest in companies that target global markets, but with the spending and growth opportunities within the wireless (and other) industries in India, new markets are being created and therefore, we believe India-focused start-ups (start-ups that serve the local market) will continue to attract funding.

• What has been the track record of previous locally-looking investments in India?

In fact, we recently partnered with Reliance Capital, Television 18 Group (TV18), and seasoned travel industry executives to form Yatra Online, the first online and centralised travel services company for the India market. This was a direct investment in an Indian company focused in the local market, and we are excited about the company and this sector.