Intel Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of chipmaker Intel Corporation, is expanding its investment horizon in India with exploring a number of possible investments in Indian healthcare companies and infrastructure companies. The venture capital firm has
also initiated talks with a few Bangalore-based firms in the healthcare-IT space. Intel Capital, which has invested more than $7.5 billion in approximately 1,000 companies, has majority of investments in typical IT and IT related companies in India.
Speaking to VCCircle, Anupam Srivastava, Director, Intel Capital, said, “In the coming future, healthcare and infrastructure would be among the core areas where we look at investments. We are keen on technology-related infrastructure space than pure infra. With the government announcing plans to scale up energy generation, we see tremendous potential in the infra-related space.”
In healthcare, the areas we see opportunity are the diagnostics space where there are many innovations such as mobile diagnostic devices take place, said Srivastava. Managing medical documents as well as bio-informatics are a few of the potential areas in healthcare-IT space we explore in India, he added.
"People have high expectation in medical care. As the diseases keep changing, the diagnostics area keeps growing. Innovations such as mobile devices can increase the quality diagnostic services in India. Innovations have not been stopped and need capital to implement in commercial way with high volume manufacturing," said Srivastava.
Intel Capital is in early stage of talks with a few Bangalore-based companies eyeing investments in healthcare-IT space. "The deal in diagnostics space could be worth between $5-25 million. We had almost closed a deal in healthcare space last year but due to the higher valuation, we had to drop out," said Srivastava. Intel Capital has deployed 50% from the $250-million Intel Capital India Technology Fund, launched in December 2005.
According to VCCedge data, about 23 venture capital deals worth $32 million took place in healthcare equipment and services space since 2005 while 51 PE deals worth $1.11 billion took place in the same space since 2001.
In telecom, there are opportunities in mobile user experience as demand increases for 3G and other technologies in India. Also, the story on investments in the value added services (VAS) and equipment makers are over, said Srivastava.
Intel Capital is also exploring possible deals in traditional areas such as IT, consumer space and vocational education.
In 2010, Intel made 3 investments worth $23 million in India such as investments in Multi commodity Exchange of India Ltd, July Systems Inc., an application software company and KLG Systel Ltd, an IT consulting firm.