SemIndia buys Exalted Networks for $8 mn; in talks with PE funds for buying more

SemIndia has acquired Bangalore-based fabless semiconductor company Exalted Networks in an $8 mn cash and stock deal. SemIndia is setting up a $3 bn silicon wafer fabrication unit. Exalted Networks has now been renamed as SemIndia Systems Private Limited, and has 100 engineers working for it. The company is expected to close the current financial year with a turnover of Rs. 100 crores. It has already started marketing third-party products with the SemIndia brand in the country. It has shipped out the first batch of ADSL modems made by co-investor Flextronics to BSNL.

SemIndia is close to closing two similar deals like Exalted. The target companies have not been named yet. It is also understood that AMD, which is till now a technology partner in the $3 bn wafer fabrication unit, will pick equity along with the government. It is also scouting for ATMP units in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. These acquisitions will be in the range of $100-200 mn and there could be at least three such deals. Additionally, it has also initiated talks with global private equity funds to raise the money for acquisition of Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP) plants and fab units across the world. The local fab units will cater to the domestic market, while the overseas fab units, which could be ultimately shifted to India, would initially cater to customers abroad. SemIndia may not buy old fab units and will focus only on acquiring new equipment.

The SemIndia consortium has been promoted by former McGill University don Vinod Agarwal, the world’s second largest chip-maker AMD, fabless ASIC semiconductor design and manufacturing giant Flextronics, private equity fund Sandalwood Partners and others.

Read the article in DNA Money.

Private equity investments at $7.5 bn in India for 2006

A record $7.5 bn was invested by private equity firms across 299 deals in India during 2006, according to a study by Venture Intelligence, a Chennai-based PE tracking firm. The final quarter witnessed PE companies investing $2.559 bn across 67 deals. Mega deals like Idea Cellular’s pre-IPO placement and the KKR-Flextronics Software buy-out contributed significantly to the total. The year witnessed several large global PE companies – with appetite for large deals – making their first investments in India. There were 26 deals involving investments of $50m during 2006 compared to just nine such deals in the previous year.

Information Technology and IT-Enabled Services continued to remain the favorite industry among PE investors during 2006 accounting for $1.470 bn across 87 investments, followed by the manufacturing industry attracting 55 investments worth $962 bn. Other industries that attracted significant PE investor attention during the year included banking, healthcare and life sciences and engineering and construction.

Late-stage investments accounted for 36% of all deals while PIPEs accounted for 22% of the deals. Early-stage investments accounted for about 20% of deals during 2006.

Read the articles from The Economic Times, AltAssets.com and Reuters.com.