Garnett

Bangalore, Oct 17: Garnett and Helfrich Capital, a private equity firm specilising in Venture Buyouts (VBOs), will expand its operations in the country by setting up its office in Mumbai, company Managing Director Terry Garnett said today.

Talking to newspersons here, he said the company, with US Dollar 350 million in equity, wanted to take advantage of the increasing market in India due to globalisation.

''Expansion in India was with a goal of supporting its portfolio companies in the region and identifying new acquisition targets for its venture buyout fund,'' he said, adding that the company, established in 2004, had acquired 40 companies.

Mr Garnett announced the company's investment in Celunite, a leading provider of open mobile platform software and services with development teams located across India. Garnett and Helfrich had acquired a controlling stake in California-based Celunite and development centres in Pune and Hyderabad.

To a question, he said ''we will also leverage our Mumbai-based operations to identify new investments in leading technology sectors such as open source mobile platform like Celunite.''

UNI