Deals Buzz: Ola founders get Temasek vote for secondary share purchase

Mint brings to you your daily dose of top deals reported by newsrooms across the country.

Ola Founders get Temasek vote for secondary share purchase

Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, the founders of Ola, India’s largest ride-hailing application, have won the backing of Temasek that has agreed to vote with them as a part of a recently structured secondary subscription of shares, The Economic Times reported. It will also strengthen the co-founders, who increased their rights, allowing them to veto any further stake buys by the largest shareholder, SoftBank, as also protect their stake, which Mint reported in May last year. Temasek is picking up a stake of about 5% in Ola parent ANI Technologies for about $150-200 million, the report said. Read more

Aurobindo to acquire Novartis’ US generics business for $1 billion

Aurobindo Pharma Ltd has agreed to buy the dermatology business and three manufacturing units of Sandoz, the generics unit of Swiss drug maker Novartis, for as much as $1 billion, Mint reported. The deal makes it the second-largest maker of generic prescription drugs in the US. An initial $900 million cash payment to the Basel-based Novartis could be followed by $100 million in performance-based payments. Aurobindo will finance the deal through a fully committed debt facility. The acquired business had sales of $1.2 billion in 2017. Read more

L&T Tech Services to buy Graphene Semiconductor for ₹ 93 crore

L&T Technology Services (LTTS), a mid-sized engineering services company part of the Larsen and Toubro conglomerate, will buy Graphene Semiconductor Services for Rs. 93 crore in an all cash deal, to strengthen its capability in chip design and embedded software services, The Economic Times reported. Graphene, a semi-conductor services design and consulting company, clocked in a revenue of Rs. 66.3 crore in fiscal 2018. LTTS said the deal will give an opportunity to cross-sell to the marquee client base of Graphene. The transaction is expected to be closed by October 2018. Read more

Peter Theil’s Mithril Capital leads $140 million investment in robotics start-up Grey Orange

Warehousing automation and robotics start-up GreyOrange on Thursday said it has raised $140 million in a Series C funding from Mithril Capital, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and existing investors, Mint reported. this makes it the biggest fundraise by an Indian hardware start-up. Mithril, co-founded by legendary Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel and Ajay Royan, led the funding round, GreyOrange said in a statement. Mithril recently raised its second fund of $850 million. Read more

Singapore’s Temasek to invest $400 million in NIIF’s master fund

Singapore’s Temasek has agreed to invest as much as $400 million in the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), a fund set up by the government of India to boost infrastructure financing in the country. With this, Temasek joins government of India, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), HDFC Group, ICICI Bank Ltd, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance and Axis Bank Ltd as investors in NIIF’s Master Fund. Last year, ADIA committed to invest as much as $1 billion in NIIF’s Master Fund. The other domestic private sector investors have together invested ₹ 500 crore in the fund. Read more