UTI Ventures Passes Out Of Excelsoft With 50X Returns; DE Shaw Picks Ups Stake

UTI Ventures, the Bangalore-based venture-turned-growth capital private equity firm has made the highest multiple of returns for an Indian fund from Excelsoft Technologies Pvt Ltd, the Mysore-based e-learning company. Global private equity fund DE Shaw has bought out the entire 35.5 per cent stake of UTI Ventures in Excelsoft for $31 million. UTIVF’s original investment in the company was only Rs 2.5 crore (in 2000) or $600,000.

For UTI Ventures, the fund has had five successful exits from its six product companies it has backed. Some of them include Subex Systems (about six times) and FourSoft (about five times). The other companies it has backed include Strand Genomics.

Excelsoft was founded in 2000 by Prof. Dhananjaya and D Sudhanva in Mysore. Initially, the company struggled only to turn around as it managed to break into the foreign corporations, universities and schools, publishers, e-learning portals and governments. It provides e-learning and e-publishing solutions to clients like Pearson, Wolter Kluwer, Thomson Learning, Guardian, Harvard Press, Oxford University and so on. The company is said to be having a CAGR of 40 per cent in profits.