Venture capital funds Sequoia Capital and Carmel Ventures may be in business to earn bigger returns than those earned from the acquisition of Snaptu by Facebook. Even so they have made an attractive profit from their investment in the mobile Internet applications developer.
According to IVC, over the past three years $10 million has been invested in Snaptu, which has developed applications to make the Internet accessible to simpler mobile phone handsets. The first investors were private individuals and the founders who put $1 million, more or less, into the start-up. From 2009 there were two rounds of fund raising with Sequoia investing $6 million and Carmel Ventures $3 million.
The bottom line is that after just over two years, the two venture capital funds will receive phenomenal returns. Sequoia which holds 35% of Snaftu will receive $25-30 million, while Carmel Ventures will receive $10-20 million.
In addition to the venture capital funds and founders, other investors who will earn hundreds of thousands of pounds from the sale of Snaptu include US company Crowded Ocean and former MK Naomi Blumenthal.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 20, 2011
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