Is India finally ready to produce some world-shaking Web companies? It certainly has the raw talent. And increasingly it has the capital. Accel is the latest VC fund to focus on the sub-continent. It absorbed Indian VC firm Erasmic, and is relaunching it as the Accel India Venture Fund.
One of Erasmic’s investors is Google. The fund does seed-stage investing inside India, and will continue to do so under Accel’s ownership. (Four Erasmic partners will keep running the show).
Accel India will reportedly raise a $60 million fund this quarter. Which may not sound like much, but it is six times bigger than Erasmic’s current $10 million fund. And, remember, this will be earmarked for seed investments, in India. A dollar goes a lot further there.
Accel has been around since 1983, but didn’t create its first non-U.S. fund until 2001 (focusing on Europe and Israel). It entered China in 2005 through a partnership with IDG. And now it is going after India.
Will Accel find the next Facebook in India? Probably not (It is an investor in the original Facebook here in the U.S., by the way). But it gets to dip its toes into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. If it can find a couple startups to shake up India alone, it will have been worth the investment.