Intel's makes first Indian investment using $250m venture fund

Intel Corporation's venture investing organization, Intel Capital, has completed three investments in Indian companies from the recently announced $250 million Intel Capital India Technology Fund. The companies receiving investment are Mobiapps, Persistent Systems and Maya Entertainment. Arvind Sodhani, President of Intel Capital said, "We look forward to working with these companies to help them grow and thereby stimulate technological innovation in India."



Mobiapps is new to the Intel Capital portfolio, and Maya Entertainment and Persistent Systems are follow-on investments in companies that have been part of the Intel Capital portfolio since 2000. Based in Bangalore, Mobiapps is a provider of hybrid terrestrial and satellite technologies for commercial communications. It converges wireless communications technologies such as 802.11,
GPRS, CDMA, and satellite to provide global communications capabilities at a marginal cost across a number of industrial applications. 



Maya Entertainment, based in Mumbai, is a computer animation and visual effects studio for film and television in India, offering quality artistry at cost-effective
rates. Persistent Systems, based in Pune, is a provider of Outsourced Software Product Development Services (OPD). It pioneered the OPD model over 14 years ago and has more than 140 customers worldwide. 



Intel Capital made its first strategic investment in India in 1998 and since then has invested in more than 40 companies in seven cities in India. Several of these have since gone public or have been acquired. Investments that were acquired by other firms include Deccanet Designs and
FutureSoft. Investments that went public on the Indian stock market this year include India Infoline.com and Sasken Communication Technologies. 



Intel Capital has also realized exits from previous investments in Subex, Rediff, Bharati Telesoft and Bharti Telespatial. This division focuses on making equity investments and acquisitions to grow the Internet economy in support of Intel's strategic interests. It invests in hardware, software and services companies in several market segments, including computing, networking and wireless communications.