Stock Radar: Bajaj Finance breaks out from falling supply trendline; likely to hit fresh highs above Rs 1,000
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Time of India
18 minutes ago
- Time of India
Speciale Invest's Fund III closes at Rs 600 crore; eyes investing in 18-20 deeptech startups
Deeptech investment firm Speciale Invest said its Fund III was oversubscribed, closing at Rs 600 crore against a target of Rs 500 crore. The new fund will invest in sovereign tech and globally scalable intellectual property (IP) from Chennai-based venture capital (VC) firm said it will back 18-20 early-stage deeptech startups in sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, spacetech, climatetech, quantum systems, advanced manufacturing, and dual-use defence. The initial ticket sizes will range from Rs 7 to Rs 10 crore, with the flexibility to go higher in some Rajaram, managing director at Speciale, said the interest of institutional investors, family offices, and HNIs in the deeptech sector has grown significantly. 'Over 50% of Fund III capital is from repeat Limited Partners (LPs), and we also have new institutions and corporate VCs,' he told said conviction in India's deeptech opportunity has strengthened. The firm will continue to invest in 'zero to one' startups at the pre-seed level. So far, the VC firm has bet on startups such as Agnikul Cosmos, GalaxEye, ePlane Company, Ultraviolette, CynLr, and QNu Labs. It has also made nine mergers and acquisitions (M&A) exits.'A large learning from our Fund I and II has been that this is the best time to build sovereign-edge technologies in the country and begin serving global needs,' said Speciale's Rajaram. He added that India's geopolitical position also calls for reducing dependence on certain foreign technologies. Out of the Rs 600 crore fund, Rs 300 crore will be reserved for follow-up is not the only fund to focus on IP and advanced manufacturing. Last week, Accel announced a significant shift in its theses, eyeing IP-driven startups in sectors like aerospace, electric vehicle (EV) components, and medical devices. The firm, in January, announced an early-stage fund of $650 million, specifically for startups in India and Southeast its Fund III, Speciale intends to increase the average ownership in startups. 'In Fund I, we owned about 5% of each company; in Fund II, around 10%; now, with Fund III, we'll target about 15%. The round sizes and company stages stay the same, but we aim for more ownership and a larger follow-on capital reserve of about 50%,' Rajaram said, who earlier was a principal at Ventureast, a $100 million early and growth stage capitalists noted that with startups thinking global first and looking at selling in global markets from day one, the existing timelines may come down by a year. Despite the growing trend, Rajaram reiterated that deeptech will need a long gestation period, and for a 'good exit, one that can return the fund, it will typically take 6-10 years.'
Time of India
18 minutes ago
- Time of India
Electronics exporters eye new markets fearing Trump's tariff shocks
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills ETtech As towering new tariffs reacquaint the world with lopsided levies last seen during the Great Depression nearly a century ago, local electronics companies are looking at alternative markets beyond the US – ironically, the primary revenue generator for the biggest Make-in-India success the Middle East and Africa are now featuring among alternative export destinations, sources said, while the US accounting for more than a third of industry shipments becomes a more difficult market, picketed by tariff guardrails and shifting content-origin goalposts."I have been reaching out to my customers proactively. They are still issuing orders, but there are concerns about how this will pan out.,' said Sanjay Agarwal, Managing Director, Globe Capacitors, which exports materials worth about Rs 100 crore annually to the US.'I have already controlled my purchases, especially for the materials I buy only for US customers,' Agarwal said. 'As far as looking at alternative markets is considered, that is always on the horizon.' Trade uncertainty has pushed exporters of a range of electronics beyond the dominant smartphones and assembled photovoltaic cells (PVC) modules to begin early discussions on ways to enter alternative markets, sources the moment, most electronics exports, including smartphones, are exempt from the 25% tariffs imposed on India originally by US President Donald Trump, and the additional 25% set to go live from August 26. This is owing to an ongoing Section 232 investigation by the US Commerce Department as mandated under the Trade Expansion Act, 1962, the findings of which are set to be announced in the coming is too early to assess the full impact of the trade changes being implemented by the US, but Indian firms with existing manufacturing footprint abroad may look to expand those operations, said Rajoo Goel, Secretary General, Electronic Industries Association of India (ELCINA)."About 75-80% of India's electronics exports are currently exempt from the additional 50% tariff regime. In the case of smartphones and IT products such as tablets as flat panel displays, which are exempt, India's value addition is relatively lower since we are primarily doing assembly,' Goel said. 'But for the remaining 25-30% products, such as PCB assemblies, telecom, consumer products, power electronics, which are subject to this new 50% tariff, our value addition is higher and would impact several domestic companies, including MSMEs."US-bound electronics exports jumped 43.5% to $15.89 billion in FY25. Smartphones made up 66% of this at $10.56 billion, and rose 89% in FY25."We are monitoring the situation closely and are looking at other markets for our products. For mobile phones, the Middle East and Africa are coming up as important destinations and for lighting, Europe is a market we are evaluating," said an executive at an electronic manufacturing service (EMS) photovoltaic cells (PVC) modules were the second largest category, shrinking 32.7% to $1.81 billion in FY25, due to increasing restrictions on imported units. The rest was spread across electronic instruments ($1.4 billion), computer hardware ($154 million) such as laptops, and consumer electronics ($115 million) such as cameras."For the roughly $2 billion of electronics exports to the US, beyond smartphones and PVC, there are enough markets which exporters should explore, be it Europe, Australia or South East Asia. Given the geopolitical realignment that is happening, Russia should also be explored," Amrit Manwani, Chairman of electronic manufacturing services major Sahasra Group said. Echoing Goel, Manwani also said many firms may have to adapt and establish partial or full manufacturing in the US given its predominance as a market, if things don't ease."Just as there has been talk of supply chain resilience, companies will now have to wake up to demand resilience. Companies will have to look at other markets like the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and Africa. It is an opportunity for Indian companies to go beyond the US and deepen their presence in other countries as well," another EMS executive said.
Time of India
18 minutes ago
- Time of India
P2P firms seek life support as tough regulations sink businesses
Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills ETtech The fledgling peer-to-peer (P2P) lending industry is seeking regulatory relaxations from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on stringent payment processing norms , as most major platforms struggle to keep their businesses executives told ET that overall assets under management through non-banking financial company P2Ps have plunged more than 85% to about Rs 1,500 crore from more than Rs 10,000 crore a year sector was first brought under RBI regulation in 2017. But in August and September 2024, the central bank issued clarifications to existing guidelines and tightened some norms. The changes, industry executives said, upended business models, disrupted partnerships with large fintech firms and forced many platforms to scale down or shut their lending operations. On March 24, ET reported that the industry had slowed to a crawl as startups struggled to adapt to the new such as Faircent and Liquiloans , which until recently contributed significantly to the sector's growth, have largely stopped issuing fresh loans, according to two people aware of the matter. Instead, they are focusing on collecting outstanding dues and servicing existing borrowers. Both companies declined to LenDenClub, after nearly a year of struggling to align with the new regulatory framework, has now restructured its operations and is attempting to scale back Patel, CEO of LenDenClub, said the firm is currently disbursing about Rs 100 crore a month to 70,000-80,000 active borrowers. 'We took a major regulatory hit in 2023-24. Over the last few quarters we have bottomed out. Now, in FY26, we are aiming for growth,' he said, adding that the company has severed partnerships with all fintech platforms including other P2P firms, such as IndiaP2P, which had exposure to the microfinance segment, are grappling with repayment challenges as stress builds among microfinance institutions.'Around 60% of repayments from the MFI sector happened through cash. That segment is showing major stress. For other loans, automatic repayment mandates were set, so we are going after collections from those borrowers,' the founder of a P2P lending firm said on condition of new loans not being disbursed, the share of delinquent loans has surged. The proportion of loans overdue by more than 90 days could be around 20%, according to industry estimates. Several founders said that some of the revised RBI norms have made operations extremely challenging. They are now trying to present these issues to the regulator in the hope of securing some sticking point is the RBI's T+1 settlement cycle mandate, which requires that any money deployed by a lender or repaid by a borrower be transferred within a day and not held in the platform's account.'If a borrower is seeking a Rs 1 lakh loan and 19 lenders commit Rs 90,000 cumulatively, we have only one day to source the remaining Rs 10,000. If we cannot, then the entire Rs 90,000 must be returned. This is a huge problem,' said the founder cited average, if Rs 7.5-8 crore is committed on these platforms daily, about Rs 3-4 crore ends up being returned, the founder added. Processing these payments, only for the money to be sent back, has become a significant operating cost for founder of another P2P firm said the daily repayment rule has created confusion among lenders while also making the business operationally heavier. 'Daily repayments have created confusion among lenders and it also makes the business operationally heavy. But regulated institutions need to strive to achieve the regulator's vision, and that is something which has been made clear to us,' the person said.
