Sandalwood Partners, an early-stage venture capital (VC) firm largely focused on the technology sector, is drawing up plans to raise a second fund to the tune of $350 million. Sandalwood, which operates a $120-million fund with investments in companies such as SemIndia, Celestial Semiconductors and Arasor, is expected to launch its new fund in late 2009. Managing director Bob Kondamoori said the new fund is in anticipation of an increase in deal-flow as well as the number of partners.

Unlike the first one, the planned second fund will be sector-agnostic and look at early-stage investment opportunities across different industries. Sandalwood usually invests about $10 million in a company, mostly those with the potential to develop intellectual property (IP). It typically looks at investments in the areas of telecom, outsourcing services, technology and renewable energy in India and China.

Mr Kondamoori said its investment in SemIndia Systems had already multiplied eight times and the electronics design company was likely to close this fiscal with a topline of $75 million. Sandalwood’s current focus is largely in the semiconductor and hardware manufacturing segments and it is scouting for companies which can create IP and bring in disruptive technology.

The VC firm plans to bring to India a 12-year-old US company focused on display devices technology. Mr Kondamoori said that the American company has IP which can bring down the prices of display devices. At the same time Sandalwood is looking at investments in China and Celestial Semiconductor is one such example. Mr Kondamoori said India’s strength would be largely in the area of design services and generation of IP while China would be the major manufacturing hub.
Source: Economic Times