Usia To Pick 10% In Animation Co

United States Investment Associates, (USIA) LLC, a venture capital firm, is picking up a 10 per cent stake in an Indian animation software company Visual Vistas Ltd.

are on the board of Visual Vistas.

Visual Vistas Ltd is based in Hyderabad and has among its board members Bollywood actress Sonali Bendre and fashion designer Manish Malhotra, and has offices in Bangalore and Malaysia.

USIA's country adviser for India, Ken Sagar, said most of the $45 million fund would go towards funding multimedia companies in India. The US firm was targeting four more companies to pick up an equity stake. USIA specialises in investments in high technology and information technology projects worldwide.

 

Sagar who is structuring the deal said the company could be a forerunner internationally providing a platform to reduce costs for animation software and animation projects from North America. He said the US firm was keen to associate with major strategic partners for products related to animation software.

Visual Vistas is headed by the former chairman of Indian Oil Corporation K N Venkatsubramaniam and has Sonali Bendre, Manish Malhotra and Rohit Reddy on its board. The former director of HTA, N K Narasimhan is the executive director of the company.

Sagar said USIA is also looking at strategic investments into other information technology related companies and would focus on the teams' strengths, business plan having global appeal addressing niche markets along with flexibility to adapt to new technologies.

According to Sagar, India was a key area for venture capitalists. "We are looking at angel and mezzanine financing for ventures in India," Sagar said. He said even though the success rate for venture capital abroad was as low as 30 per cent, rate of return on investments was extremely high.

He said India held a tremendous potential and it was necessary to educate the software engineers on such opportunities. He said even in a country like Israel which had a population of 6 million, there were 86 companies which were listed on the NASDAQ.

He said the demand to invest in infotech companies was expected to be triple which could also lead to mergers and takeovers. Sagar said during 1998, nearly $ 28 billion was invested by venture capitalists in the US.