Venture powerhouse Sequoia Capital recently added four new companies to its portfolio--all headquartered outside the U.S.--although only one has
announced a new investment round. That company, telephony systems developer Data Connection Ltd., has been around for almost 20 years, and Sequoia invested alongside private equity firm Francisco Partners in a round of undisclosed size; its other three investments are in new companies.
Sequoia holds stakes in more than three dozen Indian companies, and renewed its interest in the region by merging with WestBridge Capital Partners of Mauritius in 2006. Its latest investments there include
Tribi Embedded Technologies Private Ltd., a developer of motor control, pump and cooling drive technology for appliances and electronic devices, and
7Strata Inc., an information technology infrastructure management company.
The last is an Israeli company,
Cotendo, whose Web site is merely a placeholder. Sequoia identifies them as a content delivery network software developer. Neither Sequoia nor any of the target companies announced the sizes of the investments.
Sequoia also identified eight recent follow-on investments, only two of which were sourced by the firm's international divisions. Qumranet, a desktop virtualization software developer, is based in Silicon Valley but has an office in Israel, while GlobalLogic Inc. is headquartered in Vienna, Va., but maintains development centers in the U.K., India, China and the Ukraine. Three more of the firms portfolio companies--wireless equipment maker Stoke Inc., energy-efficient lighting provider Luxim Inc. and IT log data management company LogLogic Inc.--have overseas offices.
It's never been a secret that Sequoia casts a wide net in its investments, but its current portfolio highlights the firm's increasing emphasis on global companies. Its U.S. operations still bring in the lion's share of the firm's investments, but its China, India and Israel divisions now account for more than 110 deals.
- Paul BonanosSee Data Connection's Jan. 14 press release
Continue reading below
