Bangalore, Nov 19: Conventional wisdom in India perceived capital as a scarce resource and labour as abundant and cheap. Globalisation and software have changed all that. With the global boom in software, labour the skilled variety is in short supply. And there is no dearth of capital for people who have the right skills and killer ideas.Venture capital is the flavour of the year in India, with a host of foreign funding agencies being joined by old-fashioned behemoths like the state-run mutual fund, Unit Trust of India, in launching venture capital funds across the country.India is seen as one of the most promising sources of skilled labour and probable place for innovative software applications and business ideas because of its vast and fast-growing community of well-educated entrepreneurs. Those entrepreneurs have perfected the fancy jargon which was until recently the preserve of Silicon Valley VCs (venture capitalists), start-ups, business models, exit strategies, angel investors. In April, twoofficials of the Indian unit of Lucent Technologies Inc met executives from the Walden International Investment Group in San Francisco, looking for venture capital to fund a software consultancy. Walden not only brought in the investment, but also got the entrepreneurs Subroto Bagchi and Rostow Ravanan to join hands with Ashok Soota, then the vice-chairman of Wipro Ltd, the country's second largest software export firm.Soota was himself looking for VC funding for a start-up with the same business focus as Bagchi, his former Wipro colleague. With a $9.5 million investment and Walden playing priest, their ideas were married to form MindTree Consulting, which is a typical example of how start-up firms are being created. Venture capitalists say they are looking for strong entrepreneurs, rather than the business plans they offer. ``There is a tremendous amount of activity happening on the entrepreneurial side in India . and VC funds come in when this activity is good,'' Walden International chiefrepresentative in India Sudhir Sethi told Reuters. ``We get to see one new business plan every day in the infotech sector and that is just a third of the total activity,'' said Sethi.His sector-specific India fund has invested $30 million of the available $63 million since its inception in April 1998. ``Even a year ago, this was unimaginable,'' Sethi said. Among the big names operating in India are Draper International and eVentures, formed by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Japan's Softbank Corp. In its annual report for 1998 released in September, the Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA), which has 21 members, said the pool of funds available for VC activity rose to Rs 29.88 billion from Rs 25.59 billion in 1997.Investments made during the year grew to Rs 12.56 billion in 728 projects from Rs 10 billion in 691 projects in 1997. And the infotech sector got the largest chunk of Rs 3.24 bn of the total funds invested.
