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Tag: nasscom

  • New US H-1B visa fee could disrupt Indian IT operations, says industry body

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    By Haripriya Suresh

    NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Imposing a new $100,000 annual fee on H-1B visa applications could disrupt the global operations of Indian technology services companies that deploy skilled professionals to the United States, India’s IT industry body Nasscom said on Saturday.

    The White House announced the new fee on Friday, prompting some major U.S. tech firms to advise visa holders to either remain in the country or return there quickly. The new fee marks Washington’s most high-profile attempt to overhaul the country’s temporary employment visa system.

    Nasscom, representing India’s $283 billion IT and business process outsourcing industry, said the abrupt rollout of the policy would impact Indian nationals and disrupt continuity of ongoing onshore projects for the country’s technology services firms.

    The industry body said the one-day deadline for the new policy created “considerable uncertainty for businesses, professionals, and students across the world.”

    It also said the new policy could have “ripple effects” on the U.S. innovation ecosystem and on global job markets, pointing out that for companies, “additional cost will require adjustments”.

    Microsoft, JPMorgan and Amazon responded to the announcement by advising employees holding H-1B visas to remain in the United States, according to internal emails reviewed by Reuters.

    Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has launched a broad crackdown on immigration, including efforts to limit certain forms of legal immigration.

    (Writing by Sarita Chaganti Singh; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

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  • Indian Angel Network takes a step closer to backing 500 start-ups with new Rs 1000 cr fund

    Indian Angel Network takes a step closer to backing 500 start-ups with new Rs 1000 cr fund

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    India’s largest platform for seed and early-age investing, Indian Angel Network (IAN), has launched a new Rs 1000 crore fund to further back its portfolio companies and make new investments.

    The second fund, titled ‘IAN Alpha Fund’, comes nearly three years after the network achieved the final close of its maiden fund, IAN Fund, at Rs 375 crore in November 2019.

    The SEBI Registered Cat II VC fund is built to leverage the portfolios of both IAN Angel Platform and IAN Fund I besides investing in new sustainable businesses, the company said.

    The fund will add significant impetus to IAN’s vision of backing raising Rs 5000 crore to back 500 start-ups and creating 500,000 jobs. Its portfolio of over 200 companies, including three unicorns, has a market valuation of $9 billion collectively. The company has so far infused Rs 900 crore into early-stage start-ups and has created over 80,000 jobs, it claims.

    “IAN is recognized in the industry for pioneering angel investing in India and it has continued to innovate by launching a VC fund (IAN Fund 1) along with the Angel Group to provide a seamless platform for seed and early-stage investing. The launch of the IAN Alpha Fund is the logical evolution of our desire to provide quality entrepreneurs with money, mentoring and market access,” Saurabh Srivastava, Co-founder of IAN said.

    The Alpha Fund will back start-ups that leverage technology to solve real problems with large addressable markets. The Fund is looking to invest in cleantech and environment, healthtech, agritech, edtech, fintech, and emerging sectors like Industry 4.0, space tech, Web 3, robotics. It will invest with cheque sizes ranging from $1 to $5 million along with co-investors.

    Padmaja Ruparel, Senior Managing Partner of IAN Alpha Fund, said the network’s first fund is fully deployed now and has started to return capital.

    “This (the new fund) will, in fact, leverage and garner benefits from IAN’s global network, domain experts & high-quality mentors to help the partners build another high-return potential portfolio. We will be keen on investing in innovative ideas that have the capacity to generate profits and aim to solve real-world problems,” she added.

    Alpha Fund’s investment committee includes Saurabh Srivastava, who was also the Co-Founder and past Chairman of NASSCOM; Ajai Chowdhry, Founder, HCL; Pravin Rao, who recently retired from Infosys as COO; Raman Roy, Chairman and Managing Director of Quatrro, and Atul Batra, Ex-CTO, Manthan Systems. The Fund’s advisory board includes Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys, Sunil Munjal, Chairman & MD, Hero Mindmine & Hero Corporate Services and CP Gurnani, MD & CEO of Tech Mahindra.

    Also read: 2021 kind of funding environment isn’t coming back for a very long time: Sequoia’s Rajan Anandan

    Also read: Omidyar Network India invests in home interior start-up Mistry.Store

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  • 2021 kind of funding environment isn’t coming back for a very long time: Sequoia’s Rajan Anandan

    2021 kind of funding environment isn’t coming back for a very long time: Sequoia’s Rajan Anandan

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    The extraordinary exuberance of valuations, deal velocity and the pace of transactions of 2021 will not come back for a long time, Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital, said. 

    Speaking at NASSCOM Product Conclave 2022, Anandan said the funding environment has gone back to the 2018-19 levels with venture capital focus shifting back to quality of start-ups, which is a healthy dynamic for the ecosystem. 

    “There are still founders in the market who think 2021 will come back. The year 2021 isn’t coming back for a very long time. We are really back to 2018-19 type of funding environment. Right now, the pursuit of quality is high,” he said. 

    According to a report by Nasscom and Zinnov, start-up funding grew two-fold in 2021 to touch $24.1 billion. As per data from Tracxn, Indian start-ups raised $752 million in funding in the month of September 2022, down by 83 per cent as compared to the same period last year. 

    Anandan said valuations have corrected significantly at growth stages and are beginning to correct at seed stage. 

    “We’re really back to reality and what that means for start-ups is that we’re back to quality. You’ve to have a very high-quality business to raise funds. Last year, you could’ve raised Series A capital without product-market fit, this year you won’t be. Series B, C rounds wouldn’t be possible if you don’t have strong unit economics today whereas a lot of companies were raising rounds with broken unit economics last year,” he said. 

    He advised founders to accept a down round if their runway is limited while asking those with sufficient cash balance to leverage the market advantage to grow. 

    “If you’re running out of capital and you’ve less than 6-8 months of capital, you should take capital even if you’ve to do a down round, even if you don’t like the terms. If you’ve 18-24 months of runway and you’ve strong unit economics, you shouldn’t be raising (capital) now, you should be growing. It’s a great time to accelerate, because everybody else is on the defence, you go on the offense,” he added. 

    Anandan’s advice to start-ups to tide over the funding winter is to find great product-market fit and build strong unit economics. “If you are an early-stage company, focus on getting to unquestionable, extraordinary product market fit. If you don’t know what it means, please find a mentor who can help you determine that. Late-stage companies should make sure you build a very powerful economic engine,” he said.

    Also read: Sri Lankan author wins Booker Prize 2022

    Also read: Microsoft lays off near 1,000 employees in teams across countries: Report

    Also read: After announcing mass lay-offs, Byju’s raises $250 million

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