Jerusalem Global Ventures (JGV) has announced that it is going to raise a new fund and that it will change its business focus. The announcement ends two years of doubt about the future of the company founded by Shlomo Kalish in 1994.
JGV manages $116 million. The new fund is intended to total $200 million, and will focus on mature Israeli high-tech companies that are expected to go public within three years. The company aims to raise the initial $100 million by April 2008.
The new fund will probably make investments of $5-20 million in companies at values of $10-50 million.
Kalish said, "In contrast to venture capital investments in earlier stage companies, which assume that at least one financed company will be a big success, the business model of the new fund that we're raising is intended to rapidly generate returns on investment at lower risk."
JGV is raising capital after two good years that include the sales of Unicorn to IBM Corporation (NYSE:IBM) and Kashya to EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC), and the IPO of Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:MLNX; TASE:MLNX). According to the Cambridge Benchmark, the performance of JGV's funds are among the top 25% of European and Israeli venture capital funds.
The partners in the new fund, in addition to Kalish, will be JGV general partner Dr. Yoseph Linde and partner Ranan Grobman, who will be promoted to general partner. Intel Capital Israel general manager Shlomo Klein will join JGV as an independent partner.
Kalish said, "On one side, we have non-Israeli institutional investors with no teams in Israel, but who want to invest with us. On the other side, we have ties with investment banks that would like to consolidate their relations and prepare companies for successful IPOs. The fund will link the two groups. It's now possible to find in the Israeli high-tech industry quite a few private companies with revenue of $10 million or more. The new fund will help these companies realize their full potential."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 29, 2007
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