TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Accel Partners Closes $155 Million Accel India Fund

By TechTaffy Desk

By Vikram Sethi

Accel Partners, a global venture capital and growth equity firm, and an investor in Facebook, has announced the closing of Accel India III, a $155 million fund for seed and early stage investments in India. Accel’s India team will also evaluate select late-stage investments in India.

The fund has attracted institutional investors from North America, Europe and Asia, and will focus on opportunities in Internet services, digital media, SaaS and enterprise technologies, mobile, healthcare and education, and other high-growth sectors. Accel currently has 34 portfolio companies in India.

 Subrata Mitra (Partner, Accel Partners): While traditional venture capital and growth equity have been increasingly drawn to India over the past several years, the true seed and early stage markets are still under-served, attracting relatively smaller amounts of capital. We have seen a significant increase in entrepreneurial activity in the last few years, and in particular, we are pleased to see strong momentum from Internet companies in India.

Accel Partners has eleven investment professionals based in India, led by four partners: Mahendran Balachandran, Shekhar Kirani, Subrata Mitra, and Prashanth Prakash. Accel manages $3 billion in funds for these later stage growth investments, and currently has over $8 billion under management worldwide.

Just in

AI

OpenAI introduces new enterprise features

OpenAI announced new features aimed at enterprise users on Tuesday, at the wake of Meta's recent LLama 3 announcement.
Around the web

Oracle is moving its world headquarters to Nashville to be closer to health-care industry — CNBC

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the company is moving its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, to be closer to a major health-care epicenter, writes Ashley Capoot.
Industry

Square expands offline payments globally

Payment processing company Square has announced the expansion of its offline payments feature to all hardware devices and countries.
Around the web

U.S. bans noncompete agreements for nearly all jobs — NPR

The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own, writes Andrea Hsu. 
AI

The Coca-Cola Company commits $1.1B to Microsoft Cloud and AI partnership

The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft announced a five-year partnership on Tuesday. As part of the collaboration, Coca-Cola has committed $1.1 billion to Microsoft Cloud and generative AI capabilities.