• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Vanenburg draws up plans for Rs 75-cr infusion

Our Bureau

HYDERABAD, Nov. 22

VANENBURG Business IT Solutions India (VBITS), part of the Netherlands-based Vanenburg group, an IT venture incubator founded by the Baan brothers in 1995, has drawn up plans to invest around Rs 75 crore in the second phase of its Global IT Venture Incub ator and IT Park in Hyderabad.

Phase-II of Vanenburg IT Park would consist of two blocks with seven floors each adding to a total of 2.4 lakh square feet.

Phase-I of the project, set up at a cost over Rs 75 crore, has 23 floors in five buildings with each floor having a functional size of 5,000 square feet.

Vanenburg Group's investment through VBITS is one of the largest European investments in India.

Speaking to mediapersons on the eve of launching the first phase operations on Wednesday, the Vanenburg Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Jan Baan, said that the global engineering and technology centre in India would offer a spectrum of val ue-added services apart from venture capital to the entrepreneurs.

``The engineering and technological background of the Vanenburg Group as against the financial background of other venture providers promises to add significant value to the core competencies of start-up companies -- research and development of business technology products,'' Mr Baan said.

``The range of services of VBITS include business intelligence and strategy analysis, technology strategy, product development and lifecycle support, business development, marketing and management services.''

Vanenburg Group focuses on identifying high potential early start-up companies and helps to incubate them to become market leaders.

The group also extends a complete range of software engineering and technology services through VBITS.

Employing around 230 software professionals, VBITS is currently busy with 10 such investments from its location in Madhapur here.

The Vanenburg Group's overall portfolio of investments include Luminux, WebEx, Federation, TopTier, TopShare, Click Choice, Answers.com, Net Shepherd, Demantra, HISCOM, Kraan, Guardess and Triffit.

According to Mr Baan, the Group was investing with the objective of not just making money, but adding value to all investments through synergies with other investment companies.

``We believe that it is necessary to integrate the structured application world with the unstructured world of Internet. And using XML, it is possible to achieve this integration.''

Stating that Vanenburg's incubation involves not just funding, Mr Baan said: ``Our strength is in guiding the companies in technology and world markets. Our strength is in providing them scalability in development and giving them a direction to create a global product.''

He added: ``With our presence in 15 countries, we can help companies hoping to market products globally to take their products worldwide.''

However, Mr Baan made it clear that the Group was not interested in spreading its investments too thin.

``We prefer to invest in a small number of companies and work closely with them to make them grow fast. We have set up an Analytic Research Group in Hyderabad, which will help us select entrepreneurs not just for India but for opportunities worldwide.''

He added: ``We also have a development facility in Hyderabad which will interact with the Research Group to invest in the right opportunities and help these start-up companies to build world-class intellectual property.''