Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), a global, multi-stage venture and growth equity investment firm, has raised $1.2 billion for its Norwest Venture Partners XII fund, a press statement by the firm stated.
With this new fund, NVP has a total capital commitment of over $5 billion. The fund had a record year in 2013 as more than 11 of the firm’s portfolio companies experienced liquidity events.
NVP has invested in nearly 550 companies since inception, and currently has over 120 active companies across its venture and growth equity portfolio. The previous fund, NVP XI, also had a corpus of $1.2 billion.
“A key strategy for success at NVP is investment diversification. We invest across multiple sectors, stages and geographies, all with a team approach that enables our portfolio companies to tap into the breadth and depth of our expertise,” says Promod Haque, senior managing partner at NVP. “The closing of NVP XII will enable us to expand our focus in the enterprise IT, consumer internet, healthcare, consumer products and services sectors and grow our presence in thriving entrepreneurial hubs. We look forward to working closely with passionate and talented entrepreneurs to build the next wave of successful companies,” Haque said.
“We are experiencing another significant technology shift in the industry and it’s an exciting time to be an investor,” said Matthew Howard, managing partner, NVP. “The growing significance of technologies such as cloud, mobility, marketplaces and healthcare IT continue to create new venture and growth equity opportunities in an extremely promising investment climate,” Howard said.
The significant global liquidity events last year for the firm included the acquisition of leading global managed and cloud-based network services company Virtela by NTT Communications for $525 million, the sale of fraud detection leader 41st Parameter to Experian for $324 million and the acquisition of storage management software company ScaleIO by EMC and the partial sale of NVP shares of Indian financial services company Shriram City Union Finance Ltd. NVP sold some more stake in Shriram City Union Finance recently with 4.2x returns.
NVP has been an active investor in India with investments in companies, including Acidaes Solutions Pvt Ltd that runs CRMnext, Cholamandalam Finance, ING Vysya Bank, IndusInd Bank, Asian Genco, Fashionandyou, Komli Media and Yatra.com.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)