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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (10273)	12/23/1999 10:39:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Rediff raises $15 million; portal valued at $100 million (Friday, December 24, 1999) Pradipta Bagchi in Mumbai Rediff-on-the-net has completed its fourth round of private equity financing by placing 15 per cent of its equity with three new financial investors to raise $15 million. According to sources, the Hong Kong-based Pacific Century Group headed by entrepreneur Richard Lee, GE Capital and Citibank Private Equity Fund have taken a 15 per cent stake in the company for a combined price of $15 million. This implies that the internet portal has been valued at $100 million by the financial investors. Despite numerous efforts to contact Ajit Balakrishnan, chief operating officer of Rediff-on-the-net, he was not available for comment. Rediff.com is one India?s leading portals with approximately 30 million page views a month. It is a portal that offers news, information, shopping, free e-mail to its customers. However, the valuation of $100 million or Rs 430 crore is less than the Rs 500 crore Satyam Infoway paid for the Indiaworld family of sites owned by Rajesh Jain. Indiaworld's family of sites gets 13 million page views per month. Prior to the latest round of financing from Pacific Century, GE Cap and Citibank, Rediff had already completed three previous rounds of financing. In these three rounds, Rediff has placed 45 per cent of its equity with financial investors. In the first round Draper International picked up a 20 per cent stake for a price of $1 million. In the second Intel picked up a stake while in the third round last year Warburg Pincus picked up a 10 per cent stake for $4 million. After the placement is completed, financial investors will own 60 per cent of the company, while the promoters Ajit Balakrishnan and Arun Nanda and the other employees own the remaining 40 per cent of the company. Rediff.com has plans to tap the ADR market through an initial public offering on the Nasdaq next year. For this purpose, it has reportedly awarded the mandate to US investment bank Goldman Sachs for an offering by March 2000. (BS)