Sherpalo Ventures And Kleiner Perkins Pick Up 15 Percent Stake In Futurebazaar.com
Sherpalo Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) have together picked up 15 percent stake in the Future Group’s (Pantaloon) e-commerce portal Futurebazaar.com, Ram Shriram, founder of Sherpalo Ventures told ContentSutra in an interview today. Shriram said that they’re investing in the hybrid offline-online ecommerce model. The Future Group has the warehouses and the supply chain, and Futurebazaar.com will be offering the sale selection on the web. This was the investment, perhaps, that Shriram was referring to at a TiE summit last week.
But how much have Sherpalo and KPCB invested? Shriram won’t tell, but there may be a clue in an earlier report, last June, as per which the Future Group was looking to raise $20-30 Million For Futurebazaar.com, diluting 10-15 percent stake. As mentioned earlier, Sherpalo and KPCB have picked up 15 percent stake.
Also note that Sherpalo companies have done deals with the Future Group in the past - Cleartrip had earlier tied up with another Future Money to offer Travel on EMI. Cleartrip also has offline tie-ups with BigBazaar and Pantaloon Retail, both a part of the Future Group. Another Sherpalo investment - Paymate - provides mobile payment services to Future Bazaar. Future Bazaar is a part of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, among the largest retail co’s in India.
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Comments (6)
Mar 20, 2008 6:57 AM
sandeep murthy and sanskaron banerjee are very good friends…
Mar 20, 2008 12:27 PM
What is so special about futurebazaar.com? Why do VCs invest in such ventures? India has enough ecommerce portals. They should invest in something that is new. Only big guys are getting the money
Mar 20, 2008 12:31 PM
Srikanth: probably because it’s a relatively safer bet, being a part of the Future Group. Can you give me some examples of something that is new and scalable in the Indian market?
Mar 20, 2008 1:20 PM
this deal makes sense is if you look at it as a way to provide a large payment billing relationship + offline base for the portfolio companies of KPCB .in addition to the stuff you mentioned i won’t be surprised if tomorrow you see something like ShaadiPoint [oops.. jeevansaathi point] in BigBazzar :) .
But Still don’t you think Nikhil that this kind of investment more suited for PE Guys. Pre IPO Placements in Naukri and IDEA , now Stake in Futurebazar.com
i am not sure what kind of signals KPCB want to send to this emerging market of india.
Mar 22, 2008 3:00 PM
This is so silly. I cant believe that Sherpalo thinks this deal is worth $100M+ pre-money. KPCB is so desperate to do deals in india that they do such deal, once agains shows how VC’s can screw up the market and create artificial bubble. Also Ram, need to figure out , if Google was his last Lucky Charm, being at right place at right time, or he does have a vision.
Apr 10, 2008 3:52 AM
They must have paid between $10-$11 Million. Assuming the valuations described here,
http://web-software.broadbandindia.com/2008/04/valuation-of-futurebazaarcom.html