Google Capital- Google’s Growth Equity Investment Fund has decided to set up office in India. The late-stage fund, which was first announced almost exactly one year ago today, is set to open its first office outside the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Initially created in 2013, the fund is intended for later stage growth investments which is in contrast with the early stage investments that the sibling fund Google Ventures specializes in. Investments made by Google Capital include Survey Monkey, Lending Club and MapR Technologies.
Citing that the country of 1.2 billion recently surpassed the U.S. in terms of its number of Internet users, Google Capital partner David Lawee told The Wall Street Journal that “It makes a lot of sense to focus on India right now,” and that local entrepreneurs “are responding” with “innovative” offerings for the domestic market and thinking about global growth, as well.
According to Tech Crunch, a Google spokesperson confirmed plans to hire an India-based Google Capital representative, although it is not yet clear where that person will be based. Google capital has been eyeing the Asian market for a while now. While it led a $38 million round in InnoLight Technology Corporation, a Chinese company making cloud computing optical transceivers, it has also invested an undisclosed amount in Bangalore (IN) based CommonFloor.com, India’s leading online real estate platform that combines property search, apartment management and vendor management and caters to a person’s complete residential requirements; as well as freshdesk, a SaaS-based customer support platform that provides multi-channel support to more than 23,000 customers in 118 countries via phone, which includes India and China.
SoftBank and Tiger Global are among other investors who have set up shop in India recently. SoftBank which has already invested in Uber-rival Ola, Housing.com and e-commerce Snapdeal, reportedly plans to invest 10 billion in India.. E-commerce startup Flipkart in July said it had raised $1 billion in new funding from Tiger Global Management, Singapore sovereign-wealth fund GIC and Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Amazon also said that month it would invest $2 billion to expand its operations in India.
(image credit: Dinuraj K)
