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Gabriel News

Gabriel Venture Partners’ India Investment Portfolio Gains Momentum with Investsmart IPO

Online Brokerage Leader Enjoys Successful IPO and Readies GDR Issuance for the International Capital Market

 

Redwood Shores, California, September 5, 2005 -- Gabriel Venture Partners announced today that its direct India investment strategy has been further validated with the successful IPO and more recent international GDR issuance of IL&FS Investsmart ( IIL), one of Gabriel’s portfolio companies.

The issue price of $2.87 per share places the pre-money valuation of IL&FS at $100M. The IL&FS Investsmart’s IPO, which opened on July 4, 2005 and closed on July 8, 2005, was oversubscribed 34 times on the first day with most of the bids coming at the upper price band of $2.87 valuing IL&FS Investsmart at $125.3M:

 

  • The price band for the issue is $2.53-$2.87
  • The issue received bids for 90,500,000 shares compared to issue size of 11,400,000 shares
  • FIIs were the major investors with bids made for 65,400,000 shares
  • This was followed by mutual funds at 22,500,000 shares
  • Allocation for non-institutional investors was oversubscribed by 105X
  • Total money raised was $25.3M and the offer for sale yielded $7.5M

 

IL&FS Investsmart will raise $90 million by issuing Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) in the international capital markets. The board of directors has approved raising the share capital in the international capital markets not exceeding $90 million excluding green shoe option by way of GDRs. The company will also float subsidiaries for establishing offices in Dubai and Singapore for pursuing capital market and other related business activities. The board has also approved the increase in the paid-up capital of the its three subsidiaries in the following manner - IL&FS Investsmart Commodity Brokers Ltd from $574,712 to $2.3M, IL&FS Investsmart Insurance and Risk Management Services Ltd from $462,069 to $1.1M.

IL&FS Investsmart was set up with the objective of becoming a leading full-service brokerage house with strong expertise in web-based technology and strength in physical distribution. With service offerings across all categories and a presence in more than 65 cities across India through more than 175 outlets, IIL has become one of the most prominent players in the Financial Services Industry. ILL’s business units (Retail, Institutional Equity Business, Project Syndication, Merchant Banking and Debt Brokering) offer a comprehensive range of financial services products to its clients, including:

 

  • Retail offerings covering a variety of transaction related and advisory products for retail clients covering debt, equities, insurance, commodities and liability products
  • Project syndication - assisting projects in accessing long term debt funding
  • Equity broking for institutional segment of customers covering financial institutions, mutual funds, Foreign Institutional Investors etc.
  • Primary debt placement of corporate paper and secondary market broking for institutional customers
  • Merchant banking covering all SEBI regulated merchant banking activities such as public offers, private equity, buyback of shares, rights issuances, open offers, etc.

 

According to Navin Chaddha, General Partner at Gabriel Venture Partners, "IL&FS Investsmart is poised to become the premiere comprehensive retail financial services and investment banking firm in India. With their combination of retail branches providing brokerage services along with institutional investment, debt and merchant banking IL&FS Investsmart is providing services that India is ripe to embrace. The India securities market grew from $18.4B in 1998 to $62B in 2003 and continues to grow as Indians grows both richer as well as see additional personal savings going into securities. They are quickly moving to online services as well through their partnership with E-Trade who is an investor. Gabriel Venture Partners is excited to be apart of IL&FS Investsmart and we are looking forward to helping grow the company.”

About IL&FS Investsmart

IL&FS Investsmart Limited (IIL) is a comprehensive retail financial services and investment banking company in India with a model similar to Merrill Lynch and Charles Schwab, offering a combination of retail branches providing brokerage services as well as institutional investment, debt and merchant banking through its 153 outlets in 65 cities. For more information, visit https://www.investsmartonline.com/.

About Gabriel Venture Partners

Gabriel Venture Partners is a hands-on, cross-border venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley and India, managing over $260 Million. Gabriel’s investment team consists of seasoned technology entrepreneurs and industry executives, each with international operating experience and strong domain expertise.  Gabriel’s unique cross-border capabilities across the US, India, and Asia-Pacific greatly enhances the effectiveness of companies in need of resources and customers within these regions.  Gabriel actively partners with entrepreneurs to build the market leaders of tomorrow in technology and technology-enabled businesses.  Representative investments include Placeware (acquired by Microsoft), NetScaler (acquired by Citrix), and Iridigm (acquired by Qualcomm), as well as direct India investment including Allsec (IPO), IL&FS Investsmart (IPO), Provogue (IPO), Persistent Systems and Tejas Networks. For more information, please visit: http://www.GabrielVP.com.


Media Contacts:
Gabriel Venture Partners
(650) 551-5000
PR@GabrielVP.com