South Asia Investor Review

 Kleiner Perkins, a top Silicon Valley venture capital investment firm, is leading series A round of $17 million investment into Pakistani start-up Tajir. The startup operates an online marketplace for small store merchants in Pakistan. The announcement came via a tweet by Mamoon Hamid, a Pakistani-American Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins who led the investment. Last year, Tajir raised a $1.8 million seed round.  The company's revenue has increased by 10x since its seed round.  Here's what Hamid tweeted: "Made my first investment in Pakistan, my country of birth, and a place I called home from the ages of 10 to 13. Feels special. This also marks @kleinerperkins first investment in Pakistan. We are thrilled to announce our investment in @tajir_app_pk"  Tajir has been cofounded by two brothers, Babar and Ismail Khan. The company lets stores place orders for inventory through its app and allows customers to compare the prices of goods, purchase inventory and have ...

China continued to outperform India as a magnet for US venture capital investments in 2008. This was particularly interesting in a year that saw the venture investors feel the pinch from declining values of their portfolios. It was also a year when a company based in Pakistan became the first to receive US venture funding. In India, the VC investment in the year 2008 amounted to $740 million across 125 deals, while it was $876 million from 144 deals during 2007. A major portion of the decline came in the last quarter of 2008 when world economy started feeling the bite of the credit crunch that precipitated the economic crisis on Wall Street. Arun Natarajan, CEO, Venture Intelligence told SiliconIndia , "Everything got affected in the October-December quarter. VCs are much better off because the money is already available as many closed funding before the middle of 2008." According to Srini Vudayagiri, Managing Director, Lightspeed Ventures, the venture capital space in Indi...