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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Screwvala boards new investor story in e-com

Mumbai: Serial entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala is poised to strike investments in e-commerce start-ups as new investors, including Russian billionaire Leonid Boguslavsky, lap up India's fledgling consumer internet story. Screwvala's new holding company Unilazer Ventures, with a Rs 1,000-crore corpus, is discussing growth investments in online fashion brands Zovi and SherSingh, among others, said sources briefed on the matter. 

    Influential Russian ecommerce investor Boguslavsky's Ru-Net recently just made a $9-million funding in Indian online clothier Freecultr, modelled on the lines of fast fashion brands like Uniqlo. The Moscow-based fund also pumped $8 million into Bestylish, an online shoe retailer. These investments follow similar moves from a new set of US funds such as Qualcomm Ventures, Fidelity, Bessemer and Saama Capital, part of Silicon Valley Bank, to back the domestic internet economy. 
    This comes at a time when prolific venture capitalists Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Sequoia are limiting their exposure to the e-commerce industry. The latter will instead focus on building potential 
winners in their portfolio companies with follow-on investments. 
    "Retail infrastructure in India is not expected to catch up with demand in the foreseeable future. The rapid adoption of the web offers a unique ability to build a brand online and then take the product into multiple distribution points. There is a massive opportunity for brand and scale play online, with fashion and lifestyle lending themselves best for that," said Screwvala, who sold his stake in UTV Communications to Walt Disney earlier this year. 
    "I cannot comment on specifics but am in advanced discussions with a select few. You will hear about them soon," he told TOI. Unilazer's talks are currently ongoing with VC-backed startups Zovi, SherSingh and 
Yepme, which are mostly focused on creating affordable private labels online in fashion and accessories. 
    Screwvala said Unilazer Ventures was not structured as a private equity fund but a part of the corpus, about Rs 200-250 crore, has been set aside for angel and PE-type investments. Unilazer has bought stakes in listed midcap companies like Omkar Chemicals and will invest in three core and greenfield sectors: education, healthcare and agriculture (where it invested in INI Farms). 
    Investment funds of financial services major Fidelity and telecommunications equipment maker Qualcomm recently pumped Rs 100 crore into e-commerce store Yebhi. This came even as investments in the digital consumer industry, which topped $1 billion last year, slowed considerably with bulge bracket private equity firms having largely stayed away from coming onboard. 
    US-based Matrix Partners, which invests in earlyto-growth stage ventures and had so far kept away from Indian e-commerce, has decided to back an entrepreneur for her e-tailing venture which is yet to go live. The portal will look like the hugely successful American social shopping site Polyvore, which incidentally is backed by Matrix US.

Ronnie Screwvala

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