The VC Market in Norway

Norway Flag

Startups in Norway whose business is not related to the oil-and-gas industry struggle, The Wall Street Journal reported–that industry sucked up nearly a third of the venture capital that Norway attracted last year.

With a population of less than five million people, Norway isn’t large enough to support a tech startup, which needs to be global, but that’s not the Scandinavian attitude,  It goes slowly turning over one stone at a time. For those who follow Europe’s tech scene, naming startups from the Nordic/Baltic region wouldn’t be too hard.

VC Trends in South East Asia

Flag of Singapore

In recent years, we’ve seen a huge growth in investors’ interests in “untapped,” “developing,” “frontier” markets but what exactly does VC in Southeast Asia look like.  While Singapore is the portal to rest of Southeast Asia (as one of the associate calls it, “Asia-lite”), it’s really not representative of the rest of the countries here. In general, media has a habit of lumping all the various countries in Southeast Asia together into a homogeneous “region” – one massive consumer landscape that could be tackled in the same way companies go about dominating America from East to West.

VC Trends in Former Soviet Republics

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Venture Capital in the Central Asia group is mainly designed to share knowledge and opinion about this area of finance. Major concentration of VC is given to the developments of this area in Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan. Venture capitalists, like Efraim Landa, business angels and private equity investors all around the world seeking opportunities in Central Asia are welcome.  VC activity in the Russian market really took off after Russia’s default on sovereign debt in 1998 and has accelerated ever since. With this, we’ve seen more attention from leading western venture capital firms as well who have created a number of investment funds, incubators and angel networks focused on the Russian market. In the recent past, specifically since 2006, the Russian government has been creating infrastructure for venture capital investments in Russia and has also launched a state program focused on establishing public-private partnerships in the innovation sector managed by a number of leading venture capital firms. 

VC Trends in the Middle East

Over the last decade, the state of venture capital in the Middle East has gone from virtually nonexistent to an industry facing a shakeout. The sector’s breakneck evolution has made it difficult for investors and venture capitalists like Efraim Landa, to obtain a clear picture of the industry’s underlying VC fundamentals in the Middle East. This being the case, they have been understandably cautious about directing their funds to regional venture capital firms. To meet these expectations, the richest countries are investing billions in large-scale projects that will need to be supplemented by private funding and that will directly and indirectly stimulate economic activity.

Health of Venture Capital in Asia

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The U.S. venture capital industry is at a crossroads. Market over-saturation has led to inflated valuations and poor investment outcomes. To tackle this problem, venture capitalists, like Efraim Landa, have increasingly searched for VC markets outside of the U.S. In this respect, China and India loom large. In China though, new VC’s are threatened with regulatory laxity, while unreliable infrastructure plagues Indian investments. Many have overlooked the investment ecosystems of Southeast Asia and a resurgent Japan.

The VC Market in India

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An entrepreneur starts with an innovative idea with the goal of building a profitable business.  Many times a startup business will reach a point where it lacks adequate funding to grow further. Efraim Landa is a venture capitalist who offers funding options to a business to help them reach their goals. It is nothing like a loan that the business person must pay back. The VC firm offers the startup or emerging company the funds that they need to make the necessary changes for growth to occur in exchange for equity in the company. When the business grows to a profitable stature the VC firm will make their money back in the profits of the company.  They may also work closely with a company until it is successful enough to make an IPO at which time they will make their profit. VC funding is a great opportunity for a company who needs adequate money for growth. Many parts of the world are just discovering how beneficial the VC market can be for the future of the overall economic market.