Intel Cap to take online travel firm Yatra, two others public

Three companies from Intel Capital’s India portfolio are set to go public in 2011. These are online travel portal Yatra.com, digital projector supplier Real Image and mobile value added service company One97 Communications.

“Yatra most probably will be looking to go public sometime in the coming year. Given the recent success of a similar firm (www.makemytrip.com) on the Nasdaq, it’s kind of an obvious decision that Yatra. com will be looking to list overseas. No timeframe has been decided for the IPO (initial public offer) though,” Sudheer Kumar Kuppam, managing director — India, Japan, ANZ and SE Asia, Intel Capital told DNA.

Kuppam did not divulge details of the international markets it is likely to explore.

“We would evaluate it based on the market opportunity and take a call accordingly,” Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO, Yatra Online Pvt Ltd said.

Investors in Yatra include Reliance Venture Asset Management Ltd, corporate venture capital arm of the Reliance ADA Group, Network18 (erstwhile TV18) Group and Norwest Venture Partners (NVP).

The second Intel Capital portfolio company which is likely to go public next year is Chennai-based Real Image, which is in the business of supplying digital projection systems for mini theatres.

“On a pan-India level, it has a market share of approximately 12%. The percentage, however, is much larger in south India,” said Kuppam.

On the other hand, the third portfolio company — One97 Communications — has had to delay its public issue. Its IPO to raise around Rs120 crore was to open this month, but the promoters postponed it citing unfavourable market environment.

On the possibilities of exiting the investments in the IPO, Kuppam said a lot depends on the fund out of which investment has been made, the holding period for that particular investment and the timeframe for returning the money to the limited partners — investors in the fund.   

“There are multiple things we look at when our portfolio companies go public. We look at the opportunity, which company is the leader in that space, possibilities of additional growth ahead and chances of the investee company’s survival if we decided to completely exit the investment. In addition, we also look at our returns from that investment and whether it has been optimised. The companies going IPO next year are very much in a robust growth market and a decision to hold or exit will be taken Intel Corporation back in the US,” he said.

Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s technology-focused venture capital entity, has been investing in India for over a decade now. It entered the local market in 1998 and launched its first fund in December 2005.

“Our India portfolio comprises approximately 60 companies and we have exited around 16 investments so far. We have very recently taken a minority stake in Bangalore-based Omnesys Technologies for an undisclosed sum,” Arvind Sodhani, president, Intel Capital and executive vice-president, Intel said.
In 2010, Intel Capital invested approximately $45 million across eight investments including $5-6 million in Omnesys Technologies.

Of its $250 million corpus, the Intel Capital India Technology Fund has invested approximately 60% so far and is likely to announce a new fund once it reaches the 80% threshold.

Intel Capital primarily invests balance sheet money or proprietary capital. “Being part of Intel, we have only one limited partner and investments are made using the balance sheet money. So there is no fundraising process for us as such. The new fund will however take some time, though the corpus will either be equivalent or higher than what we had in the first fund,” Kuppam said.

The technology-focused sectors Intel Capital invests in include data centre (cloud computing), education, smart TV mobility, software and services, and consumer internet.