KVP Venture to invest in 4 IT companies

KVP Venture to invest in 4 IT companies
ENS ECONOMIC BUREAU

MUMBAI, MAR 29: KVP Venture, the Rs 1100 crore venture capital fund floated by Australian baron Kerry Packer, HFCL chief Vinay Maloo and stock broker Ketan Parekh has announced strategic investments in four software and internet companies, including Walchand Netsoft and Hexaware Technologies.

The venture fund would take a 33 per cent stake in cricketnext.com, cricket portal promoted by Sanjay Jha and Pallavi Jha through their privately held company Walchand Netsoft, the venture capital said in a statement. The fund would also take 10 per cent stake in educational portal mykindasite.com promoted by Omega Portals Ltd, the statement said, adding the site has recorded three million hits since its launch in December 1999.

Targeted at children between the age of three to 15 years, the portal has various features including content on academics, games, music and quiz programmes, it added.

KVP Ventures is also investing 15 per cent stake in Mumbai-based software services company Hexaware Technologies promoted by Atul Nishar. Hexaware Technologies and its two overseas subsidiaries have a turnover of Rs 103 crore and focusses on services in the areas of E-commerce, enterprise application integration, enterprise systems management and application management. Hexaware which was one of the first few companies to demonstrate Wireless Application Protocol capabilities is expecting substantial business growth to come from its WAP offering, the statement said.

In addition, KVP Venture is also investing 10 per cent stake in Chennai-based Radiant Software which is into software training and consultancy. Promoted by IT entrepreneurs S Giridharan, G Gita and V Sridhar, the company's clientele includes Citibank, Satyam Computers, Cognizant, Alcatela and Britannia among others. The company's project division Lambient specialises inmobile internet, Oracle and Unix administration, web portals and E-business solutions.

KVP statement did not mention how much it would spend to acquire the stake in these four companies. Packer had announced the Rs 1100 crore venture capital fund on Monday to invest in high technology areas like IT, software, E-commerce, telecom, media, entertainment and biotechnology in India.