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Global Reach
In 2003, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) saw companies it had invested in
starting to go to India. By 2005, a network of more than thirty were there, and were
continuing to ask the firm for advice. At that point. the firm began to view India not
just as a resource, but as a market to invest in. KPCB doesn’t have a separate India fund, but
invests there as part of its general strategy. By the end of 2008, KPCB had a portfolio of nine
early-stage Indian investments, all in consumer markets (Internet, mobile telephony, and cleantech),
and one of its investees, jobs-listing company Nauri.com, was the first consumer Internet
company in India to go public (in 2006) and reach a market capitalization of $1 billion.
In another high-profile investment, Vinod Khosla began working in 2000 with Jagdeep Singh,
a Stanford and UC Berkeley graduate and co-founder of two previous companies (OnFiber
Communications and Lighters Networks), on development of a photo-integrated circuit (PIC) that
could handle much higher volumes of broadband traffic over the Internet at lower cost. By June
2007, Singh’s new company, Infinera Corp., raised $182 million in an oversubscribed IPO, and
today it is a $1.8 billion company providing optical transmission equipment to companies such as
Cox Communications, XO Communications, and 360Networks.
In 2007, Mayfield Ventures purchased a minority stake in Indian investment bank
Avendus Advisors for $15 million; Silicon Valley Bank participated in Series A funding
for mobile telephony value-added services developer One97 Communications; and
IDG Ventures India invested $2.5 million in iViz, a Kolkata network security startup that uses
artificial intelligence techniques and next-generation hacker simulations in an automated network
vulnerability testing software program.
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